Family Secrets
by A plus
Summary: A woman thought dead returns after the final battle. A secret past between Lily and Severus is revealed. Now that Harry has a mother and sister, where does that leave the girl who has always played both roles for him? HHr SSLE DMOC."I'm not your mother."
1. Chapter 1

So that was it. It was over then, wasn't it? He had done it. He had finally done it. After all these years, he had killed the Dark Lord. This wasn't how he had expected it to feel.

Harry Potter, the one who had finally fulfilled his destiny, the one who had saved them all, was sitting crouched on the floor of the library of No. 12 Grimmauld Place listening to the din of the party downstairs. He silently cursed himself for making this the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. If he hadn't, he would be here alone right now and no one could come bother him. He heard the door open and a very drunk Ron Weasley scanned the dark room, apparently for looking for Harry as the object of his search leaned back further into the shadows. Not seeing what he was looking for, Ron left the room. The sounds of other doors being open and shut echoed down the hallway as the young man continued his search.

Harry sighed. He really should be downstairs celebrating with the rest of them. That was what he had expected himself to be doing after he killed the Dark Lord, not to be sulking upstairs in a dark room by himself. He had thought he would be happy. He had thought that he would finally be free. He had thought things would be different. They were different, of course, but not that much. He was free, but what had the cost of that freedom been? His parents lives, Sirius, Cedric. Sure, he had saved the future, but nothing he could do could change the past. Nothing could bring them back. He had known this all along of course. Known it, but not accepted it.

The door opened again and once more he withdrew into the shadows. A tall figure stepped into the room and he immediately recognized the menacing profile. He breathed a sigh of relief. There was really only one person who would not try to drag him down to the party right now and that man was Severus Snape. The man turned slowly, quickly locating Harry amongst the shadows.

"Get up, Potter," the man sneered.

"I'm fine right where I am," he retorted defiantly from the floor.

"Potter," Snape said warningly, stepping closer to him, "I need you to come with me."

There was a desperation in his eyes that Harry had never seen before.

"Where?" He asked flatly.

"What does it matter to you? As long as it's not downstairs." Snape raised his eyebrow.

It was true. He wanted to be anywhere but here. The only thing stopping him was the anti-apparition wards inside the house and all the people he would have to pass to get out of it.

Severus held out a key in his hand. It immediately started to glow blue. Snape looked at him expectantly and he reached for it. A split-second later, Harry found himself on soft grass at the edge of a forest.. He looked up to see the rotting wood ceiling of the library replaced by the starry night sky. Snape was a few yards ahead of him, headed for a small house in the distance.

Harry walked briskly to catch up to them and neither said a word as they strode to the house. Harry used the walk to study the man beside him. Snape was good at hiding his emotions, but Harry was even better at reading them. From his observations, Snape was anxious, but not necessarily in a bad way. It was an anxiety filled with both hope and despair. As if the next few moments would hold a long-awaited answer to an important question that would either save him or damn him.

Snape pushed the door open and strode into the small room. A breeze whipped into the room behind them, stirring up a layer of dust. Severus muttered a few spells and there was a glow from the fireplace, a few more and the dust was gone. From the small amount of moments that Harry had seen the dust, he was pretty sure that no one had been here in at least a decade, if not longer. Harry sat down on the couch as Snape paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. It was clear to Harry that they were waiting for someone, or something.

There was a hesitant knock at the door. Severus froze. Harry looked up to see this man who been a deatheater and a spy frozen in fear beside the fireplace, completely incapacitated to do anything other than stare at the closed door. The knock came again, a little louder this time. When it became clear that Severus wasn't going to do anything, Harry rose to answer the door.

He was halfway there when the door opened on its own accord and in stepped a figure dressed in a hooded cape. The figure was clearly a woman. Another smaller female figure stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. The first figure lowered her hood and Harry froze. He had never met this woman, yet he knew immediately who she was. He had seen pictures, yet none that had been taken more recently than seventeen years ago. But even from the pictures he had seen, there was no mistaking her identity. This woman was his mother.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry was speechless, motionless. Time stopped for him and he stared at the woman who was unmistakingly his mother. His mother who had been dead for almost seventeen years but who nevertheless was standing in front of him. He was frozen, but fortunately she was not. In a split second her arms were wrapped around him and she was kissing his hair.

"Harry, oh Harry, I wasn't sure if I'd ever see you again. I'm so sorry for not being there for you, for leaving you for so long, for not being there to help you grow up. I'm so proud of you, what you've done." She stopped talking as her tears overcame her. She just held him.

He finally managed to get out, "You're….alive?"

"Yes Harry, I am," she sighed, "but it's a long story, a very long story."

She gave him one last loving gaze before stepping past him and making her way to the other man in the room. She stopped in front of Severus and wrapped her arms around him, burying her head against his chest. One of his arms wrapped protectively around her back while the other held her head to his chest as she silently wept. After a few moments, she stepped back from him and raised her hand to cup his cheek.

"Harry," she said with her back turned to him, still staring into Severus' eyes, "I'd like you to meet someone. This is your half-sister."

The girl who had followed Lily in stepped out of the shadows beside the door in which she still stood and gave Harry a small smile. The girl was petite and had long black hair past her shoulders. She was maybe a few years younger than Harry. As she raised her head and the hair fell away from her face, Harry saw her eyes. They were his eyes, his mother's eyes.

"Severus," Lily whispered, a tear running down her cheek, "I'd like you to meet your daughter."


	3. Chapter 3

She hesitantly opened the door the Headmaster's office. 

"Miss Evans." The old man greeted her with a nod as she took a seat.

"Auror Evans" she corrected him.

"That's right. Please forgive me, I have a hard time seeing former students as anything but students."

"Of course sir."

This was not a friendly visit. She felt as if she was in the headmaster's office getting in trouble again….not that she ever had. She tried to shake this feeling. She was not a student anymore. She was several years out of school and had completed her auror training.

"I asked you here," he started, "because something serious has come to my attention."

"Oh?" She felt him trying to invade her mind and gently pushed him out. She didn't know if it did much good, she had a feeling that he knew everything already.

"It has come to my attention that you have had contact with a Death Eater. That you have been involved in a secret sexual relationship with him."

She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, burying her face in her hands. It had been heaven being with him for the past few months. Those late night secret meetings, the feel of his hands on her body. But she wasn't stupid enough to think they could get away with it, not forever at least.

She opened her eyes after a few minutes to see him staring at her, eyebrow raised, waiting for the answer to a question that he had not asked.

"I love him. It's my personal business and it has nothing to do with this war. I've told him nothing of the Order or the Ministry. He's told me nothing of the Dark Lord. As I said, it's personal."

"Miss Evans. Needless to say, I am disappointed. You're a smart girl, smarter than this."

"I know."

"It cannot go on. You are a security risk to both the Order and the Aurors."

"I know sir. You will have my resignation from the Order tomorrow, and I will send the same to the head of the Aurors. I know that I do not want to be a risk to our cause."

"I think you misunderstood me Miss Evans. We need you. You are the most highly skilled auror we've had in a long time. You made it through training in only two years. I'm sure you know that is a record. Miss Evans, quitting is not an option. This is a war and we need you. You cannot turn your back on this."

"If I could stop seeing him, I would have a long time ago."

"I know Miss Evans. That's why I called you here. To help you forget him."

The sparkle in his eye had turned into an evil glint.

"No," she whispered. "Please No."

He raised his wand as a single tear made its way down her cheek.

"Obliviate."

She could feel her memories being shifted and rearranged. She tried to cling to the thought of him, to her love for him, but she felt it being pulled away from her.


	4. Chapter 4

He watched her from a distance as she shopped. It had been several months since they had spoken. He assumed someone had grown suspicious of their relationship and she had decided to lay low for a while, but nevertheless he wanted her. He couldn't help himself anymore, no matter what the risk. After several hours of watching her shop, he slipped up behind her whispered in her ear, slipping one arm around her waist.

"Hey baby, let's go sneak off somewhere and I can show you how much I missed you."

He was caught by surprise as he felt his body being turned and smashed against the wall, his arm twisted behind his back and a wandpoint pressed against the back of his neck.

"Don't you _dare_ touch me."

"Lily, it's _me_."

"Oh, I know who you are Severus Snape. And it's 'Auror Evans' to you."

He was too shocked for words. What had happened in these last few months to change her so much?

"I should arrest you right now, you vile Death Eater."

She released her hold from him and he turned to face her.

"Lily, what's going on with you?" He reached out his hand to caress her cheek, but she caught it and then slapped him in the face.

She spoke in a very serious tone, "Never touch me again. I mean it. I'm with James and you know it."

He took a step back.

"You're what?"

She held out her hand and the sun glinted off the diamond ring.

"I'm married."

He was speechless, heartbroken. She had told him she loved him and then gone and married another man. This explained the cold behavior, her wanting to pretend there had never been anything between them.

xxx

He was sitting in the back of the Leaky Cauldron when she found him. She had been looking for him for months. He was not an easy man to find. He was hooded and so was she. It had been several years since the last time she had seen him. She ordered a drink and slipped into the empty seat at his table. She could not see the look of surprise under the hood.

"Evans," he greeted her coldly, "I thought you made it perfectly clear several years ago that you wanted nothing to do with me."

"Severus," she spoke in a low voice, glancing around to make sure no one could overhear them, "I think someone put a memory charm on me. A dark one. I need your help. I keep having these flashes of…being with you…as if they're memories, as if they really happened, yet I have no memory of them."

He leaned forward.

"You have no memory of us?"

"Until that day when I slapped you, I don't remember seeing you since our graduation from Hogwarts."

"And Potter?"

She looked ashamed.

"Was I cheating on him?"

"No. Of course not. You caught him cheating on you and you broke up with him. We didn't start until after that."

"Who did this to me? Is there a way to undo the memory charm?"

"I will look through my books and contact some people, see if I can find anything that might work. Come to Spinner's End in a week and I'll try to help you."

A week later, she sat on his dusty sofa waiting as he fumbled around in the next room. She was nervous. She was a married woman, a mother, she should not be here with this man. She was an auror, she should really know better than to ask a death eater to tinker with her memories. But still, she had been getting these flashes that she could in no way reconcile with the memories she had. In her memories she had never so much as kissed the man in the next room…then how did she know what he looked like naked? Why did she keep getting these flashes of his touching her skin, of her touching his?

Finally he came into the room and handed her a vial filled with a thick green potion. She looked up at him disapprovingly.

"Yes, it's a dark potion. The memory charm used on you was a dark one so this is the only way to counteract it."

She nodded and gulped down the contents of the vial.

For several moments, nothing happened, then all of a sudden the memories came rushing back to her. She was filled with emotions had been repressed and forgotten but now came rushing to the surface. She cried for hours as he held her in his arms.

"I loved you," she said with a hint of amazement, "that's why Dumbledore stole my memories."

He said nothing, but continued to stroke her hair, trying to calm her down.

"I can't stay with James. I can't stay in a marriage I was tricked into."

"Then Dumbledore will know that you have your memories back. He will never let you out that easily. We know what he is capable of now, that he will stop at nothing."

"I will fake my death. It's the only way out."

So the plan was made. It was a risky one. They would create a false prophecy for him to bring to the Dark Lord, luring the Dark Lord into a trap. When he arrived at the Potter's house, Lily and Severus would be waiting to kill him. Once they did, they would make it appear that Lily and her son had died in the battle but not before killing their enemy. Then they would disappear with Severus, cutting off all contact to the wizarding world.


	5. Chapter 5

They prepared for their plan for months, set up everything very carefully. They had every detail planned, every second. She sat in his laboratory as they went over the plan for the next day one last time. 

"So that's everything then…we're ready?"

"As ready as we'll ever be."

They stared at each other, unsure of what there was left to do. It was she who reached out first and touched him. It was he who reciprocated. It was she who left his house in the dead of the night to take her place in bed next to her husband and started counting down the hours until she would be free.

xxxx

Lily paced the living room of her house with her son in her arms. Tonight was the night. She had ensured James would be out on a mission, leaving her alone to enact the plan. She didn't know how much James knew and wanted to leave him out of it. Severus should be arriving any moment. She heard the pop of apparition from the kitchen, but when she entered the room, it was not Severus standing there staring at her but James. His eyes were dark and angry.

"I know what you're planning Lily. I know what you and your precious lover are planning."

"I'm sorry James. It's the only way."

"No. You're mine and I won't let you go."

"James, I was never yours, not without magical manipulation."

"It was the only way I could have you."

The realization hit her.

"You're the one who found out about Severus and I and told Dumbledore."

"Yes."

"You bastard. You knew what you were doing all along. You tricked me into being your wife."

"I won't let you leave. I'll see you dead before I see you leave me."

He raised his wand to curse her when a green light hit him from behind. His body collapsed to reveal a black cloaked figure in the doorway.

"Severus."

She blinked a few times.

"You killed him."

"Yes"

He hadn't planned on it. He had seen James raise his wand at her and he had just reacted.

There was already one dead body. Their plan was falling apart before it had even begun. They were both pacing now. Severus stumbled a little and grabbed onto the wall for support. The killing curse had taken a lot out of him. It would be some time before he could use any magic at all let alone magic powerful enough to stop the Dark Lord and time was one thing that they did not have. The clock chimed. They both walked up the stairs to the bedroom where her child lay sleeping, oblivious to the fact that his father had just been killed.

Lily was the one to speak the thought they both were thinking.

"If James knew what we were planning, do you think he told Dumbledore?"

The windows shook in their frames, both Lily and Severus froze. The air seemed to vanish from their lungs. The baby in the crib started crying and Lily picked up her son and rocked him in her arms.

Each second seemed to take an eternity to roll by as they waited for the inevitable. Only a small lamp lit the bedroom where they new waited. Severus stepped back into the shadows, hoping to conceal himself and take the Dark Lord by surprise.

The plan, the plan they had spent months meticulously detailing had been thrown out the window. James was not supposed to show up because James was not supposed to know about the two of them. Severus was not supposed to expend all his magic on the killing curse before Voldemort even arrived.

The plan needed both of them and all their combined magic. They had researched an alternative, one that Lily could perform by herself in case he was killed first, but it was very risky and involved a very dark spell. He had not taught it to her, not wanted her to use it. There in the shadows, Severus made up his mind. He would simply fight the Dark Lord with whatever he had, even if it was only fists and a short knife at the moment. It wouldn't help much and he knew it, but he would lay down his life if it had the faintest chance of protecting his love.

There were footsteps downstairs and he closed his eyes to take a deep breath. When he opened them, Lily was staring right at him, wand raised.

"I'm sorry Sev, I can't let you do something stupid."

He instinctually raised his wand to cast a spell to block hers, but even that little bit of magic had not yet returned to him.

"Stupefy," her soft voice cut through the dark room and he collapsed into a heap in the shadows, aware but powerless to do anything but watch the scene unfolding before him. Lily had always known him too well.

She kept her wand trained on the closed door, willing her breathing to slow. Even if she was terrified, she needed to at least appear in control. There was an eerie calm in the room now. Harry had miraculously stopped crying and squirming and now lay still in her arms. She felt like her heart would stop when the door finally slowly creaked open, revealing a dark figure silhouetted against the light of the hallway. He stepped into the room and addressed her.

"Give me the child."

"No," she said in a braver voice than she felt.

"Give me the child and I will let you live."

"No. I will die before I let you touch him," she said, holding her child closer to her.

Voldemort quirked his head to one side, as if studying her for a few moments. She started chanting words that he did not recognize, words that she had copied from Severus' book and studied every night until she had them memorized. These were words that she had hoped to never use, but had prepared for anyways….only as a last resort. She watched and the beam of green light came toward her and moved her arm to shield her child, never missing a beat of the incantation. She closed her eyes as the light intersected with them, lips still moving. She felt it wash over her like a powerful wave knocking her under and pulling her along the ocean floor. When she opened her eyes, Voldemort was gone and she lay in a tangled heap with her child on the floor. She shakily pointed her wand into the darkness of the corner and released her spell on the man who lay there. He got up at once and rushed over to her.

"Lily, how could you?" He whispered, caressing her cheek. They were words that would have been angry if he had not been so relieved that she was alive.

"Can you honestly tell me that you would not have tried to take on the Dark Lord without any of your magic?"

He could not.

She started to check her child over to make sure that he was really, truly all right. She brushed his hair away from his forehead and gasped.

"Severus," her voice said shakingly, "what is this? This scar? It's not from the spell I cast."

Sure enough, there was a lightning-bolt shaped scar on her son's forehead. Severus took out his wand, and finding that his magic had returned enough to cast small spells, started casting some diagnostic spells that Lily could not identify.

Finally, the spell glowed green and Severus paled.

"What is it?" Lily said in little more than a whisper.

"Voldemort…when he died…turned Harry into a horocrux." He glanced at Lily to make sure she understood the impact of his words. He was unsure whether or not she would have learned about horocruxes in her work for the aurors. By the panicked expression on her face, he guessed that she had.

"It's not his only one. I had heard rumors that Regulus Black had discovered one, that there were many, but I hadn't believed the rumors, I hadn't thought he was powerful enough…until now."

"So he'll be back."

"Yes. It will take some time for him to regenerate, maybe a decade even, but he will be back."

"And he'll come after Harry."

"No, not right away. Harry has protection from him now. Your magic is protecting him. Voldemort will know that in order to kill Harry, he'll have to kill you first."

She picked up her son.

"So we'll go on with the original plan, we'll all vanish and let people believe that Voldemort killed us."

She turned to leave the room, but Severus grabbed her arm gently.

"Lily, you don't understand. By making your son a horocrux, Voldemort didn't just give Harry the power to kill him, he established a connection between them. I know that a lot of this is purely theoretical, but there has been a lot of research done on the subject. When Voldemort returns, as he gets stronger, he will be able to see what Harry sees, be able to connect with Harry's mind. If you run with Harry, no matter where you go, he will find you."

She turned to look at Severus and stared into his eyes as if searching for an answer. She knew the answer of course, she knew what needed to be done, she just couldn't bring herself to say it out loud. Finally Severus spoke the words.

"The only way for Harry to keep his protection against Voldemort, is for you to leave and for him to grow up believing you are dead."

She choked back a sob. The thought of leaving her son was almost too much to bear.

"Lil, it's the only way for you to protect him, for you to ensure his survival."

She nodded and reluctantly set her son back down in his crib, kissing his tiny forehead and trying to memorize the face that would be so much older by the next time she saw it.

"Lily, we need to go, Dumbledore will be here any minute and you know he won't let you leave if he knows you're alive."

"I'm leaving, but you're not coming with me."

"Lily, I…"

"No, listen to me closely Severus. The only way I'm leaving my baby is if I know there is someone to protect him. As soon as I leave, you will go to Dumbledore and beg him for forgiveness. Tell him that you loved me and want to seek your revenge on the Voldemort when he returns. Tell him you'll be his spy and teach at Hogwarts. Dumbledore will help protect Harry from Voldemort until Harry is ready to take him on himself. After Harry is ready, take your revenge on Dumbledore. It's safer if we have no contact until this is all over. You'll send an owl to find me when Voldemort is dead."

Severus nodded. He wanted so badly to go with her, but him staying was the only way she would leave her son under the protection of the wizarding world as she went to live as a muggle.

"Ok. I'll do it."

"Swear it to me," she demanded with a resolute look in her eye.

"What?"

"Swear to me that you will protect Harry."

"I swear."

The house shuddered again as the front door was blasted open. Dumbedore was there and they only had a matter of seconds.

"I love you," he whispered and pulled her to him for one last kiss before they apparated with two quiet pops in opposite directions.


	6. Chapter 6

Harry sat quietly as his mother recounted her story to him of why she had left and how she had discovered she was pregnant with Severus' child soon after. She told him of how she had raised that child in the muggle world. She told him of how her heart had leapt every time she heard the flutter of bird wings, hoping against all hope that maybe it was an owl telling her that it was all over and that she could see her son again. Then she listened attentively as he told her about his childhood, his treatment by the Dursely's, his adventures at Hogwarts, his battles with the Dark Lord. They were up talking well into the early hours of the morning. When she finally entered the small bedroom where Severus waited for her, she looked angry.

"Harry has been telling me about his time at Hogwarts, his experiences with you," she frowned.

"I swore to protect him," he sighed, "not to make sure he was happy. He's alive, that's all I promised you."

She sat down on the bed.

"I know he looks like James, but he's not."

He didn't look at her.

"I know if must have been hard to see the face of the man you killed staring back at you every day in your classroom, but he's my son."

"I know. I know that. I protected him for you. It was all I could bring myself to do."

She studied his face. The past fifteen years had been much harder on him than it they had been on her. He had been a spy, playing both sides. He had committed deeds that no man should be asked to do, but she had asked him. And he had done it. He had done it all for her.

Could she ever ask any more from him?

She settled down into the bed next to him and wrapped her arm around his side, drifting off to sleep against him.

xxxx

Harry woke the next morning and looked around. His bleary eyes took in a small unfamiliar room with dark curtains that emitted the early rays of morning sun. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was: His mother's house. The words even sounded strange in his head. She had asked him to stay with her, to live with her. He had agreed. He wanted to spend time with her and leaving the residents of Grimmauld place to empty out while he finished school the next year seemed like a good plan. He walked downstairs to the kitchen to find some breakfast.

He noticed there were only three bedrooms upstairs. He hadn't realized that before he went to bed. At some level, one that he couldn't completely accept even to himself, he realized that his old professor was in that third bedroom with his mother. He quickly pushed that thought away. It would have to wait at least until after breakfast, if ever.

Entering the kitchen, Harry found his sister already in the kitchen helping herself to a bowl of cereal.

He took a good look at her for the first time. Her build was very similar to his mother, as were her facial features. Her hair was dark and straight, like Snape's, while her eyes were a brilliant green.

"Good morning," she smiled shyly at him, taking her cereal and sitting down at the table.

"Hey," he mumbled sleepily and helped himself to some cereal. He went to pour the milk but it sloshed and ended up all over the counter. He reached for a towel to mop it up.

"Can't you just use evanesco?" came the voice from the table

He looked up and eyed her curiously, then pulled out his wand and performed the spell.

"I thought you were raised as a muggle, that you couldn't do any magic so that they couldn't find you."

"Oh yes, I've never actually done any spell, but I've read all about them. Mom taught me everything to do with magic and I read all sorts of books about it…I've just never actually tried any of it, but I know all sorts of spells. Alohamora, Expelliamus, Lumos…."

Harry stifled a smile as she continued naming all the spells she had read about. This girl was going to be worse than Hermione. Hermione, he needed to owl her and let her know what had happened.

Violet stopped listing spells as her mother entered the room. Harry stiffened as his professor walked in behind her.

"Violet, dear, your father is going to take you to get a wand today."

He nodded and stood there awkwardly as if unsure how to act and what to say around his new daughter. He looked at her for a moment and then focused his gaze on the wall.

Violet's eyes lit up at the mention of a wand.

"I'll go get ready," she said quickly, running upstairs in her excitement. This left Harry in the uncomfortable position of sitting in the kitchen with his mother and Snape. He was thankful that Violet was quick and returned in only a few minutes and left with her father.

Severus apparated to Diagon Alley with his daughter. He had wanted to make his way quickly to the wand shop, but she had never been here before and was determined to look in each and every store window. He waited uncomfortably, allowing her time to catch up to him. She ran up breathlessly.

"Did you see that? That frog was made out of chocolate!"

"Yes."

His lack of enthusiasm dampened her spirits; It almost seemed as if he was mad at her. She had been hearing stories about this man her whole life. She had spent her whole life waiting to meet her father and here he was and all she wanted in the entire world was for him to like her. It seemed to her that he didn't.

"I'm sorry I'm taking so long," she said awkwardly and apologetically.

"I don't know how to do this." He glared at her.

"To do what?" she stared at him with a blank expression on her face.

"I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be a father," he snapped, as if blaming her for his awkwardness in the situation.

"Well, I've never exactly had a father either," she retorted. They stood for a moment at a stalemate, staring at each other silently.

"It's not like I'm a child. It's not like this is anything you don't deal with on a daily basis. You teach people my age, don't you? Can't you just treat me like you treat them."

"I'm not a very nice teacher." He was not making this easy. If her mother hadn't warned her this might happen, she might have given up right then and there.

"You were sixteen once, maybe you could try to remember what it was like, what you would have wanted to do."

He looked around him. Yes, he had been sixteen. By that point he had been abused and bullied. He had a fervent desire to make sure his daughter had a better life than he had had. Encouraged by his first fatherly emotion, he thought about his sixteen-year-old self, hiding in his room reading and experimenting with his potions set.

"Ok, come on," he lead her into an open doorway and carefully watched her reaction. If his daughter was anything like him… He judged by the expression on her face as they entered the bookstore that she was.

They left an hour later with arms full of purchases. He had always watched Lucius spoil Draco with distain. Now he felt himself succumbing to the same impulse.

They resumed their shopping with their original goal: a wand. They stepped into the wand shop just as Olivander came out from the back.

"Here for a wand?" He greeted them, looking at Violet. When his eyes traveled upwards towards her father, his expression hardened. Apparently he had not forgiven Severus for being on the same side as those who had kidnapped him and held him prisoner. The court had handed down their decision, but there would always be those who refused to believe it.

"Your first wand?" he asked with a raised eyebrow, assessing that she was a little old to not have one already.

"Yes," Severus stepped in, ending the conversation there.

"Try this one," Olivander offered to Violet. She waved it and nothing happened. He went into the back and came back with a different one to test out.

"Your daughter?" Olivander asked coldly as Violet tried waving the newest wand.

"That's none of your business," Snape bit back.

It took a few tries to find the right one. She held it and stared at it with wonder as her father paid. She had wanted one of these since her mother had first told her about wands when she was a little girl. It was her key, her way in to this world that she had been denied entry to for so long. A father and a wand, it was all she had ever wanted.

Severus opened the door and Violet stepped out.

"The illegitimate daughter of some muggle you raped?" The wandmaker asked bluntly as soon as she was out of earshot. It took all of Severus' control not to hex the man right there. If his daughter had not been waiting for him outside, he would have. He narrowed his eyes and sent the man his vilest glare before following his daughter outside.

They stepped outside the shop and Violet was surprised when he father did not start walking immediately. Instead, he paused and began to speak.

"You don't have to tell anyone…if you don't want…that I'm your father. You could keep using your assumed name."

Her eyes focused on the ground, trying not to look at him, trying to steady herself so that she wouldn't cry.

"You don't want…you don't want anyone to know you have a daughter?"

"No, that's not why."

"It's ok. I understand if you're ashamed to have a daughter who will be so behind in her classes and can't even do simple spells and…"

"No," he interrupted, "I meant that I have a reputation, a past. The other students know me. They know what I've done. If you want to start clean and not be associated with that then…"

"No, you're my father."

"But you don't know what I've done, what I've been. You will hear things from the other students that might shock you."

"Mother told me. She told me what you had to do."

"But.." he protested.

"At Hogwarts, it doesn't matter what anyone says. I know the truth. I know that whatever terrible things you were forced to do, you did them to protect mother, to protect Harry, to protect me even though you didn't even know I existed. People who want to see you as a murderer can hold that against me if they want, because they don't matter. You're a hero and anyone who matters will know that and won't hold it against me for being your daughter."

He studied her for a few moments.

"You're too much like your mother.

She grinned at him, "she always tells me that I'm too much like you."

He shook his head and started off towards the apparition point, the patter of footsteps behind him letting him know that she was following.

"I have some business to take care of, but I will apparate you home first."

"I could just come with you."

"No."

This was not something he wanted to see. He still had some loose ends to tie up before he could live his new life.

xxxxxx

Draco sat in a bare, cold room. An dull, eerie light filled the space, illuminating the two aurors who stood guard over him in the room, wands at the ready. He had spent the past two months in a cramped cell with no light and no visitors. He had been kept in isolation and not even allowed to see any of the other prisoners. The dementors did not guard Azkaban anymore, but their presence seemed to linger. Or maybe it was the place itself which sucked the soul dry of any happiness, of any hope.

In the back of his mind, as he had been dragged down a path he had never wanted, as he had committed despicable acts against his better judgment, he had always known that this was a possibility. In the back of his mind, he had always known that he was breaking the law and might one day be punished, but that possibility had seemed remote when compared to the very real danger he faced at that moment if he did not do as he was told.

As far as he had been able to tell, there was no end in sight. He would spend the rest of his life in this place. His mother had died not long after the battle. She had not been well and the stress of it was too much for her. If he was to believe the whispers he overheard in the halls, his father and aunt had been captured as well and were being held in a different part of the complex.

Draco had gotten thinner and paler during his imprisonment. This was the first time he had been taken out of his cell. He now sat in a dirty room with walls painted a sickly green that was peeling off the walls in large chips. He was scared and alone and he felt that whatever reason he had been taken to this room, it could not be good.

He stared down at the rough table surface in front of him, lost in his own thoughts when the door abruptly slammed open and a dark figure strode into the room. It was his godfather, who had revealed himself to be working for the other side. It was the one person who was not a prisoner here who cared what happened to him. Severus motioned for the guards to leave them and they complied.

Draco expected him to relax once they had left, but his face remained stone cold, betraying nothing. There was no sign of the warmth that Draco had come to expect from him, and when he spoke it was cold and businesslike, without greeting or preamble.

"Did you kill anyone?"

"No," he whispered. "I did other things, terrible things. I had to, but I never killed. I couldn't. I couldn't do it."

Severus approached the table and put both hands on it, leaning his weight onto them and getting close to his godson.

"Draco, listen to me closely. I will try to get you out of here, but you have to listen to me. You have to tell them everything. Every word you heard, every action you saw, no matter how significant. You have to tell them."

"But my family…"

"Draco, save yourself. Lucius, Bella, they deserve whatever they have coming to them and you know it. I can get you out of here, but you need to give them whatever you have on everyone else."

He had been raised to believe that family was everything, that you were not to betray your family name. He had very little left, to betray his few remaining relatives would be to destroy even that. He would have nothing left.

"Ok. I'll do it."

Severus nodded and left without any further words. The aurors came back inside the room and began to take down his story, word by word. He started with his childhood, the things he had heard his father say, had seen his father do. Every word he spoke against his father was a knife through his heart. He had been taught that the worst crime was betrayal of your family name. He had believed that when he had been younger. But now, after he had lived through a war, he wasn't sure if he believed it anymore. He had seen things, seen his father commit crimes in the name of the dark lord, in the name of the Malfoy family. It was hard for him to believe any longer that a family name was worth anything in the face of rape, murder, and torture. And so he told his story, betraying everything he had been brought up to believe in favor of everything he had learned for himself the hard way.

Before Severus had come, he had known that he wanted freedom, but hadn't really been sure that he deserved it. Sure, his crimes had not been as bad as some, but they had still been crimes. He had played with dark magic, had even liked the way it tasted on his tounge and felt at his fingertips. Sitting in his dark cell, he had wondered if his soul had been corrupted beyond repair, if perhaps Azkaban was really the safest place for him. But Severus had come, and then Draco had known that there was one person he believed in him, who didn't think that he had been consumed by darkness. His godfather, the one person who had always been there for him above all others, who had always known him the best, believed that he should be free. And so he began to believe it himself. And so he betrayed his family, not as much for himself as for his godfather, to prove that his belief was not misplaced.


	7. Chapter 7

There was a soft tapping at the door to Harry's room. A second later, it inched open and his mother stuck her head inside. It made him so happy to see the real life version of that face that he had only ever seen in pictures and dreams.

"Hey."

"Hey. Do you have a minute?"

"Sure," he said, putting down the book he was reading and sitting up on his bed. His mother entered the room and sat on the bed next to him.

"I have received an offer of a teaching position from Hogwarts. Minerva Mcgonnogal is going to be the new headmistress, which leaves them short a transfiguration professor. She has contacted me and inquired if I might be interested in teaching. I just wanted to make sure that it was ok with you. I mean, you have your school and your friends and everything and I just thought that maybe you wouldn't want your mother there. I mean, I would like the position, but I'm sure they could get someone else to fill in for a year until you graduated."

"No. I think you should take the position. I'd really like you to be there. All my life, I've wanted nothing more than family, I've wanted nothing more than for you to be alive. Now that you're here, I don't want to go even a day without seeing you. I want to make up for all the years we were apart."

Her eyes shined with unshed tears of happiness.

"Thank you Harry. I'd like to make up for all those years too."

She got up and started moving towards the door.

"So they'll set up a room for you at Hogwarts?"

She paused by the door, back turned towards her son and arm in mid-reach towards the knob. She stayed in this position for a moment, contemplating her answer. Finally she turned around and took a few steps back towards the bed.

"There's actually something else that I've been meaning to speak with you about. Severus has…Severus has asked me to marry him."

Harry stood up.

"Please tell me you said no."

"I said yes."

"But it's Snape."

"Harry, I love him. I've loved him since I was nine years old. He's made some mistakes and so have I.."

"Mistakes? He joined the Death Eaters!"

"That was almost twenty years ago, he's more than made up for it."

"It's not like he's been innocent since then. He…he killed Dumbledore."

"He did nothing I didn't ask him to do. He did what he had to do to protect you, to protect me. I've asked so much of him, more than any man should be asked to do. Believe me when I tell you that he has more than paid for his crimes. He has never asked anything of me. And now he is asking me to marry him. I owe him everything, I cannot deny him this."

"How could you let him be my stepfather. I've told you how he treated me. You've seen how he looks at me, even now."

"I've spoken with him. I've told him that I would not marry him if he did not accept you as his son and treat you accordingly."

"I don't want to be his son."

"You said you've always wanted a family…"

"_My_ family, with my mother and _my_ father, not Snape."

"He's Violet's father. Can you deny _her_ the chance to have her family intact?"

Harry sat back down on his bed.

"No. no, I can't."

She reached down and kissed his forehead.

"I love him, Harry. I really do."

Harry walked into the kitchen the next morning only to be greeted by the sight of his mother with her arm indiscreetly wrapped around his former nemesis and future stepfather. He instinctively clenched his fist. His mother saw him and detangled herself from the embrace. Snape turned around and Harry saw a fleeting smile on his lips for a split-second before it turned into a scowl.

"I'll leave you two alone for a little bit. I think it might be a good idea for the two of you to have a little talk, perhaps clear the air between you a little." She slipped out of the room, letting the door close softly behind her. Neither man moved. There was a static tension in the room that was palpable.

"You killed my father." Harry accused coldly.

"I saved your mother's life," Snape snarled back.

"It's not like that was your only murder."

"I did what I did to protect you, you ungrateful brat."

Harry fingered his wand in his pocket. His magic whipped and curled inside him, threatening to last out. He couldn't let himself be here with this man when he couldn't control his emotions; it was too dangerous.

The door slammed behind him.

Harry stormed across the lawn and apparated to Grimmauld Place. He found it still full of people. He avoided them and made his way for the library to find the one person he needed to talk about this with, the one person he was certain to find there.

Hermione sat reading a book. He saw her hand twitch towards her wand at the sound of the door opening. They might have told themselves that they had moved on from the war, but their unconscious reflexes told a different story. His hand twitched the same way any time he saw something move out of the corner of his eye, every time a noise caught him off guard.

"He wants to marry my mother! The fucking bastard is trying to marry my mother."

She felt his magic ripple and surge around them. The bookshelves started shaking.

"Harry," she said softly, standing up and reaching out to touch his arm. "Harry, you need to get your magic under control." This hadn't happened in a while, not since the war. When his emotions got out of control, his magic dangerously slipped away from him.

"Harry," she said again, stepping closer and rubbing his arm. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The bookshelves stopped shaking. Hermione was the only one who could stop it when he got like that. He opened his eyes again to see her watching him with a concerned expression on her face.

"Sit down, let's talk about it."

He sat with her for hours and recounted everything that had happened over the past few days, everything his mother had told him, everything that had happened between him and Snape.

"Harry, this is not the end of the world. A week ago all you wanted, all you wanted in the entire world was to have a family. Well, you're going to have a family now. Your mother is alive. You're not an only child anymore. You have a sister! What would you have given for that just a week ago?"

"Then why can't he just leave me and my family alone?"

"Because he is as much a part of it as you are. Are you willing to let your personal feelings about him get in the way of your mother being with the man she loves, are you willing your sister to have what you always wanted- two living parents, a whole family?"

"No," he whispered.

"Then get over it."

"What?"

"Get over it. As much as you hated him, he has spent the last fifteen years of his life protecting you. He's gone to hell and back to make sure you stayed safe. You don't have to be his best friend, but you owe him at least this, to not stand in his way as he finally tries to claim the happiness that has been denied to him for so many years."

"But it's Snape."

"Harry, if you just wanted someone to complain about how much of a bastard Snape is with, then you should have gone to Ron." He hadn't, he had gone to her.

"He's such a bastard."

"She loves him, Harry," she said softly, reaching out to touch his hand, "We can't control who we love. She loves him and he loves her back. That's rare. You should be happy for her." He looked up and saw that she wasn't looking at him but staring at the floor instead as she spoke.

The door to the library opened and the immediately pulled her hand away from his at the sight of the long-red hair entering.

"Harry!" the girl screamed, running over to hug him, "I thought you were at your mother's house. I thought you weren't hanging out with anyone this week."

"Yeah Ginny, I'm still staying there. I just needed to come talk to Hermione about something."

"What did you need to talk to her about?" Ginny asked, eying Hermione suspiciously. She hadn't missed the sight of the other girl's hand withdrawing from her boyfriend as she entered the room.

"Just stuff, nothing important."

"I haven't talked to you all week."

"I know. I'm sorry. I've been busy with my mom."

"Not too busy to come see Hermione," the girl said pouting.

"Ginny, it's just Hermione. Don't get all paranoid."

"Maybe I should go," Hermione cut in, standing up. She didn't want to get in the middle of a lover's quarrel.

"No," Harry said, standing as well, "I need to be getting back home."

Ginny pouted again. "You can't even spend some time alone with me before you go? I haven't seen you in soooo long. I miss you, baby."

"I know, Gin, I know. I miss you too. I just need to spend some time with my mother now. I promise, next week I'll come by the Burrow and hang out with you."

The sun that had shone earlier that morning had passed behind the clouds and the day was now decidedly overcast. He entered through the door that he had slammed only a few hours ago. This time he closed it softly behind him. He found that his mother had not yet returned. After finding the kitchen empty, he made his way into the laboratory. He found his professor there, bent over a steaming cauldron. Harry stood in the doorway, not feeling welcome to move into the room any further. Snape made no indication that he had heard Harry enter. Harry watched him work for a few moments before speaking.

"I'm willing to try this, to try to start over….for her."

Snape looked up at him, studying his face for a few moments and then nodded.

Severus and Lily sat in the library, both sorting through their lesson plans for the year. The room was silent but for the scraping of quills and the rustling of parchment.

Lily flipped through her lists of students, recognizing familiar family names, no doubt children of people she had been in school with. She inquired to Severus as to the connections of a few of them. Then another name caught her eye.

"Harry's been telling me about his adventures over the past seven years. The name Hermione Granger seems to come up a lot. What do you know about her?"

"She's an annoying insufferable Gryffindor know-it-all intent on dominating each class for the purpose of demonstrating just how much she knows," he paused and sighed, "You'll love her."

A few minutes passed as they each returned to their work. Then, Lily, continuing the conversation, "More of a know-it-all than you?"

She ducked to avoid the wadded up piece of parchment that was flying towards her head.

She chuckled to herself.

"You think you're so funny, don't you?"

xxxxxx

Draco was guided down a narrow hallway. It was one he recognized, the one that had led him to the interrogation room every day for the past few weeks. He had gone over his story, time and time again, remembering every word that was spoken, every action that was done. With every word he spoke, he felt as if he was pushing a knife further and further into his heart, but every word also set him free. It was only by cutting himself away from his family that he had a chance at a life.

They reached the end of the familiar hallway, put he was pushed right instead of the normal left. They soon arrived at a room he had not seen before. His godfather stood waiting for him. The guard who had led him nodded to Snape and then left. Snape opened the heavy door behind him and sunlight streamed in, so bright it caused Draco to wince and squint. It had been many months now since he had seen the sun. Severus moved to leave, but noticed that Draco did not follow him. Draco was still standing there with a confused look on his face.

"You're free, Draco, let's go," he said impatiently, motioning to the open door. Draco cautiously stepped outside, striving to keep up with his briskly-walking godfather. Snape reached into his robes and pulled out Draco's wand and handed it to him. He stared at it for a few moments before tucking it inside his own tattered robes.

"Are you taking me to Spinner's End?"

"I'm bringing you to your aunt's house. She is your guardian now."

"My aunt?"

"Andromeda Tonks."

"But I've never even met her. Can't I stay with you? You're my godfather."

"She's your family."

"But I want to stay with you." He whined desperately.

Severus stopped walking and turned to face the young man. He had sufficiently wiped out his past, like wiping clean his own slate. All of his former associates were now either dead or in Azkaban. He had broken free from his former self…almost. This boy that stood before him, that bore the same mark as he tied him to that past self, to that past life. Draco reminded Severus of the mistakes he had made when he was Draco's age. This boy reminded him of everything he was trying so hard to forget.

"Draco, I'm getting married next week. I have a child, a family. I need to make this work and you being around would just make that more difficult."

Draco was speechless for a moment.

"Oh, so that's how it is, is it? You needed me, my family, as long as you didn't have one of your own. Now that you have a child of your own, I'm no use to you anymore?"

Severus didn't deny it. It was easier this way.

"What about my house. Can't I just go home?"

"Draco, firstly you haven't graduated from school yet. Secondly, the Malfoy Manor has been confiscated by the ministry,"

"But it's my home!"

"It was your father's house, maintained and financed by decades of corruption and crime."

"But…"

"I'll take you to your aunt's house. You only have to stay there until school starts. I've talked Mcgonnogal into your conditional readmittance to Hogwarts. I'll see you next week; your aunt has an invitation to my wedding, you may accompany her."


	8. Chapter 8

Harry watched as Andromeda Tonks put the finishing touches on his mother's hair. She looked beautiful in her wedding dress. She turned towards her son and smiled brilliantly.

"Hello Harry, the wedding should be starting in a few minutes," and noticing the nervous-looking girl who stood to his side, "and who is this, Harry?"

"Mother, I'd like you to meet my girlfriend, Ginny."

"It's really nice to finally meet you, Ginny."

"It's nice to meet you too Ma'am. And congratulations on the wedding. Having it on the Hogwarts grounds was such a great idea."

"Thank you."

"And your dress is Beautiful. I love the cut of it and the lace is gorgeous. Where did you buy it? Did you have it made for you?"

Ginny chattered on and Lily glanced over the shoulder of the young woman talking to her and watched Harry lean over to a girl with curly brown hair who she could only assume was Hermione.

"Hermione, I don't really know…" Her son whispered to the girl, gesturing to the untied tie hanging loose around his collar.

She turned towards it and had it tied in a couple of seconds.

"Thanks," he whispered, "I always use magic to do it at Hogwarts, but there's no place for a wand in these pants."

She smiled with him. The smile was broken in a second as Ginny turned around, took Harry's arm and walked away. Lily caught Hermione's eye who then looked away uncomfortably.

xx

Draco sat by the lake, throwing in pebbles and watching the ripples they caused. He could hear the music and laughter from the wedding drifting over to where he sat. He should not have come to the wedding. No one wanted him here. In fact, no one wanted him anywhere. To some wizards, he held the mark of their most hated enemy, to the rest, he had betrayed everything they believed in. The wedding had been miserable. He had been actively ignored or treated to rude insults. He preferred sitting by the lake alone until it was time to leave. The sound of footsteps broke him out of his thoughts. He turned his head to see who was approaching and was faced with a dark-haired girl around his own age.

"Hi," she said with a smile.

"Hey," he said, turning away from her and tossing another stone into the lake.

"Do you go to Hogwarts?" he asked, eying her suspiciously, "I don't recognize you."

"No. I'm new. New to this whole world, actually. I'm starting at Hogwarts in a few weeks. I'm Violet by the way."

"Draco."

"Why are you over here all alone?" she asked, sitting down next to him uninvited.

"No one wants me at the party."

"Why not?"

"This," he said, pulling up his crisp white shirt sleeve to reveal the black mark scarring his forearm and staring at it with distain.

He felt her small hand wrap around his forearm and her thumb run down the mark. He shivered at her touch. No one had touched him since his mother had died. No one had ever touched his mark. Her gesture was so innocent yet to intimate at the same time.

"It's just a tattoo, just ink on skin, nothing more."

"It's so much more than that. It's a symbol that I'm evil. You said you were new to this world, you wouldn't understand what it means." He tried to pull his arm away, but her small hand tightened around it.

"I may be new to it, but I've been taught all the history. I know exactly what this mark means. But I also know that my father has the same mark and I know that he isn't an evil man. He certainly isn't the nicest or easiest man, but he is a good man in spite of the symbol burnt into his arm."

Draco looked in the direction of the party.

"You're Snape's daughter?"

"Yes."

His expression softened. She loosened her grasp and he pulled his arm out of her hands.

"Well, you're not exactly going to have an easy time making friends either."

She smiled at him.

"I guessed as much."

She stood and brushed herself off.

"I should be getting back to the party."

"Yeah."

"Well, I guess I'll see you at Hogwarts."

"Yeah, I'll be easy to find. I'll be the one without any friends."

She stopped and looked back at him seriously.

"You have one."

xx

Her red hair flowed down his back as her head rested on his shoulder. He held her softly as she giggled and sighed. She was beautiful in her dress, she really was. Hermione stood in the shadows, watching the couple dance slowly.

A familiar voice from behind her made her jump.

"Miss Granger?"

"Hello Professor or rather Headmistress."

"I've been looking for you. Might we talk for a moment?"

"Yes of course."

"Miss Granger, I was wondering if you would be willing to tutor another student this year. As you know, Violet Snape is starting Hogwarts this fall. She has a theoretical knowledge of magic, but no practical knowledge prior to a few months ago. Her parents have been teaching her the basics of spellcasting and such. She will be tested in all subjects prior to the start of school and will be placed in classes accordingly. There will, of course, be gaps in her knowledge. We thought it might be best if there were another student that could help her if she had questions."

"Yes, of course, I'd love to."

"Good. He will be very happy to hear that."

"He?"

"Her father. He was the one to suggest you."

"Really?" she mused as she looked across the room to study the man who had always told her that she wasn't good enough, that she didn't deserve the credit that the other teachers gave her.

"Take it as a compliment," the older woman whispered to be before walking away, "he wouldn't even hear suggestions anyone else to do it. You were the only one he trusted with the education of his daughter. Seems like he always thought more of you that he let on."

xx

Several hours later, Hermione went looking for her boyfriend. Most of the guests had left and she had been helping to clean up. She finally found Ron with Harry, sitting by the bar, drinking straight from a bottle.

"Please don't tell me you two are drunk," she said impatiently.

"It's a wedding, what do you expect?"

"Where's Ginny?"

"Left with her mother."

Ron tried to stand up but fell right back down into his seat. Harry did a little better and made it partway over to where she stood, swaying and staggering wildly.

"Oh, come on Hermione, drink with us." He slurred, holding the bottle out to her. She took it from him and set it down on a table. She held out her finger towards him.

"Harry James Potter, you are drunk."

"What did you expect, Snape's my stepfather now. I call that a special occasion."

"Well then, maybe you should stop referring to him as Snape."

"Stop being so bossy," moaned her equally drunk boyfriend.

"Oh, don't even get me started on you, Ronald."

"I have an idea," exclaimed Harry, "lets go get our broomsticks and play quittich on the pitch."

Ron's eyes lit up.

"No. Absolutely not," Hermione said firmly, "That is the worst idea I have every heard. You two are too drunk to even stand up. How do you expect to fly? Someone's going to get hurt."

Harry took another step towards her and stumbled. She stepped forward and reached out to steady him. She wrapped her arm around his waist and let him lean on her.

"Harry, we're leaving for the honeymoon now," came a voice from outside the tent and his mother and her new husband stepped inside.

"Oh," Lily said, seeing the condition of her son, currently being propped up by his best friend.

"I'll make sure they get home safely," Hermione reassured her with a smile. Lily and Severus left and Hermione attempted to get coax Ron up out of his chair. They had barely made it out of the tent when Ron decided he was going to be sick and stepped out of sight behind a tree. Harry was still leaving heavily on Hermione.

"I still think we should play quittich," he remarked.

"I know you do," she sighed, shifting her weight. He really was much bigger than her and he had his arm wrapped around her shoulders now, using her to balance himself.

She took Ron to the burrow first before apparating Harry to his home. She helped him inside and up the stairs into his room. He had gotten slightly less drunk in the time that it took, but still couldn't be considered anywhere near sober.

He sat down on the bed and she turned to leave, but he caught her hand. It was shaking.

"Cruciatus?" He asked seriously.

"Yeah."

"I didn't know you had lasting effects from it." She could see the pain in his eyes. It was why she had hidden the after-effects of the curse from him.

"Just when I'm tired or stressed, it comes back a little."

He held her trembling hand in his, trying to steady it with his firm grasp.

"I'm just tired, Harry, it's no big deal."

He was still staring at her hand, mesmerized.

"It's because of me. This is my fault," he whispered.

"I chose to take the torture, Harry." She pulled her hand from his grasp.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, eyes burning with sadness and guilt.

"It's not your fault, Harry. Get some sleep."

"You can stay here tonight."

She eyed the empty bed next to him.

"I should really get home."

They had slept in the same room so many night in that tent in the forest searching for horocruxes. But if she did it now, if she spent the night in the same room as her best friend, it would be different. There was no war now, these were not desperate times. Her sleeping here would mean something completely different, something that would destroy their relationships, something that might destroy their friendship. She shut the door to his room softly.


	9. Chapter 9

The school year started without occasion. It was strange, almost uncomfortable, to go through such familiar motions after the drama and adventure of the past year. Being back in those familiar halls, it was almost as though nothing had changed, even though everything had. The emptiness of the dorms from those who had died in battle was filled by the students who should have graduated the previous year coming back to repeat the classes they had missed. The security and warmth that the castle had provided them in their youth was now interspersed with memories of those who had died there.

Hermione opened the door to the Gryffindor common room, hoping to find her friends there. Being back here had been hard on her and she really needed to unwind. There was Harry, sitting in a chair. On his lap was his girlfriend, his beautiful, perfect girlfriend. This was not what she needed.

"Hermione," he said, seeing her come in, "come hang out with us."

"I…I can't."

"Why not?"

"I'm going to the library."

"Hermione, it's the first day of school."

"I….I have some work to do," she stammered, turning around and quickly moving towards the door. It wasn't until she was on the other side of it that she could breathe again.

Harry had watched her leave, concerned about his friend. She had seemed different since the war ended. She had not been her normal put-together self. She was more scattered, more unsure of herself than he had ever seen her. This bothered him, but he had been too wrapped up in his own drama to give it much thought.

x

x

Violet had spent the evening with her father and was making her way up to her dormitory. She had made it through her first day at Hogwarts, the place she had grown up hearing stories about. She was not yet out of the dungeons when she saw a familiar figure sitting on the floor outside of the Slytherin common room leaning against the heavy stone wall.

"What are you doing out here?" She asked.

"I figured it would be better if I just left. That way they can talk about me without whispering."

She laughed.

"So what are they saying about you?"

He grew serious.

"My testimony put some of their parents in Azkaban."

"Are you in any danger there?" He didn't miss the look of concern on her face.

He shook his head.

"No, Slytherin is being heavily watched this year. Everyone knows that one wrong move will get them thrown out of Hogwarts without a second thought."

"Still, maybe you should be careful."

"I always am."

"Of course. You're still here."

"I saw your sorting. How are things going in Ravenclaw?"

"It's kind of weird so far. It's like everyone is just waiting for me to hex them or something. Then there are a few of them that keep trying to suck up to me and then ask me all sorts of questions about Harry."

He laughed.

"So you have the misfortune of being tied to both fame and infamy before they even get to know you."

"Thanks for talking to me. I feel so alone here. I mean, everyone knows each other already and I don't know anyone. Well, Harry's here, but he has all his friends and I don't know if he really wants his little sister hanging around with them. I just don't want to bug him."

"I'm not saying that I know Potter well, but I highly doubt he would object to your presence."

"Well, I should get back. It's almost after curfew."

He stood up.

"Not a rule-breaker, eh?"

She smiled at him, "not if I don't have a good reason to be."

x

x

Hermione sat with Harry in the library when his sister arrived for her first tutoring session. Hermione showed her the small classroom adjacent to the library that she had arranged to use for their meetings. They pulled up two chairs to a desk and sat down as Hermione pulled out a stack of papers from her bag.

"How was your first day of classes?" She asked the younger girl.

"Hard."

"You tested into mostly sixth-year classes. Your scores were understandably higher in History of Magic and other subjects that don't include a practical. You show a lot of promise though, so you shouldn't be discouraged. Did you have any problems today?"

"Yeah, there were some spells that I couldn't quite get. I wrote them down."

She showed the older girl the list and Hermione demonstrated before having Violet give them a try. The session went fairly smoothly as Hermione was a good teacher and Violet was a quick learner.

An hour later, Violet started gathering her things to leave.

"How was your first day besides classes? I mean, are you making friends?"

Violet shifted nervously.

"Not really. I mean, I think people are kinda afraid to approach me. No one talks to me much so far. I don't think they like me much."

"It's ok," Hermione said, placing a hand on the younger girl's shoulder, "No one liked me either when I first started. Harry and Ron were pretty mean to me, actually, and they're my best friends now. Things will get better once people have enough time to get to know you. Until then, you're always free to hang out with us."

"Thanks. It's just hard to be thrust into a world so different from the one I've grown up in. And I think sometimes that maybe if I work harder it will… Sometimes I just don't know if…" she trailed off.

"If what?"

"Nevermind. Nevermind, it's silly."

She turned to leave, but Hermione caught her arm.

"You belong here," she told Violet with conviction burning in her eyes, "You belong here and you should never feel like you have to prove that to anyone."

x

x

Hermione sat in Transfiguration class, furiously scribbling down notes and trying to ignore the hushed conversation of the guys sitting next to her. They had been given time at the end of class to practice the latest spell, but her friends were using it to discuss their plans for the night while only giving the spell a half-hearted effort.

"Yeah, let's go play quittich after class," she heard Harry say to Ron.

"Harry, don't you have an essay due tomorrow?"

"So?"

"An essay that you haven't started?"

"Yeah," he said sheepishly, "Maybe we should do it tomorrow night instead, Ron."

Ron glared at his girlfriend, she was always ruining everything. The professor walked over to where they sat. She had overheard the conversation. Hermione expected the woman had come over to say something to her son, but she spoke to her instead.

"Miss Granger, may I have a word with you after class?"

Hermione approached her professor's desk cautiously after the room had cleared out. It was so strange to not know someone so close to a friend she had known for so long. It was so strange to look into the familiar eyes of someone she had never known.

"This talk," Lily began, "is of a more personal nature."

Hermione nodded.

"I wanted to thank you, for being there for Harry when I couldn't be, for watching over him, for taking the role that I should have taken."

Hermione nodded again, suddenly nervous around this woman who was showing her so much gratitude.

"You saved him…more times that I can count. You kept him out of trouble the best you could. You even made sure he did his homework. He needed you and you were always there for him. I know this sounds strange, but I just wanted to say thank you."

"You're welcome," she replied, turning towards the door.

"One more thing," Lily's voice cut through the empty classroom, "He has a mother now. You don't need to be a mother to him anymore."

Hermione turned slowly to look at the older woman. Her first instinct was that this had been an insult, the woman's way of staking her territory on her son, but the softness in Lily's voice told her that this was not the case. She eyed the woman suspiciously and then turned away from her.

"I was what he needed me to be," she whispered, almost to herself.

"I know you were. But he doesn't need you to be that to him anymore. You're free to be whatever you want to him."

She left the room with a profound feeling of freedom. It was like a giant weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She was no longer responsible for him. She was free.

x

x

Hermione entered the common room. It was full of people. Her boyfriend noticed her enter and approached her.

"Hey. I haven't seen you all day." He tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away from him.

"Ron, can I speak with you in private?"

"Sure," he replied, following her down the hall until they found an unused classroom.

He leaned against the desk and she shifted nervously, avoiding his eyes. She started to unfold a folded piece of parchment she had been carrying.

"So the thing is that…..what I've done is that…..what I needed to tell you is that…..well, I made a list so that…"

"You're breaking up with me, aren't you?" he interrupted.

She looked up at him. His blunt question seemed to give her the words she needed. She crumpled up the piece of parchment and stuffed it in her pocket.

"It's over, Ron."

"Hermione, I…"

"Oh, don't act so surprised. It's over and you know it. You've known it for maybe as long as I have." She sounded tired. He stared at her for a moment.

"You'll never forgive me for leaving, will you?"

"It's not about forgiveness."

"I let you down and I'm sorry. I am so sorry." She had no doubt that he meant it.

"You stayed as long as you could." She said curtly.

He looked at her curiously, "You knew I would leave, didn't you? You knew I wasn't strong enough to make it." He might not have been the most intelligent wizard, but he understood strategy.

She swallowed hard and looked away, "I kept you there as long as I could."

"That's what this was always about, wasn't it? I always got the feeling that you didn't want to be dating me, that you didn't feel that way about me, but I always reasoned that there was no other reason for you to be dating me except that you wanted to. But that's not true, is it? Come on, Hermione, I may not have always been there when you needed me to be, but I've _always_ been honest with you."

He wanted to be angry at her, he really did. But he felt more angry at himself for something that he should have known all along.

She reached out and took his hand, looking back up at him.

"I was worried that you weren't strong enough to stay by Harry's side for what needed to be done, for what we needed to go through to get there. You'd deserted him before when things got rough. I knew he needed both of us there by his side if he was even going to have a chance at doing what he needed to do. I figured you needed something else to anchor you, that you maybe you needed something stronger than friendship to make sure you stayed."

"And I left anyways."

"Yes."

"You're not mad at me for leaving _you_. You never were. You're mad at me for leaving _him_."

"Yes."

"It's been almost half a year, Hermione. Voldemort's dead. Why did it take you this long to break up with me?"

"He still needs you, Ron. He still needs both of us."

"You thought I'd get sick of his moods and stop spending time with him. If you were dating me, you could control when who I hung out with and how I spent my time. You'd make sure to drag me along when you hung out with him."

"You know how he gets, Ron."

"Yes, I know how he gets," Ron said bitterly. "This, you and me, it's always been about him, hasn't it?"

"Oh, don't pretend I'm breaking your heart," she said coldly. He looked up at her with indignation, but she continued. "I'm not saying you don't like me, or suggesting that you're not attracted to me, but if you loved me, and I mean really loved me, then you would not have left me there in those woods." Her voice was raised now, stopping just short of yelling at him.

"Hermione, you have these unreachable standards. I loved you as much as I could. There comes a point, only a certain amount a normal man can take, even if he is in love. I came back, didn't I?"

She just stared at him.

"But that's not enough for you. You have this completely unobtainable ideal of what love is," he yelled, and then pausing and lowering his voice, "and you'll never settle for anything less, will you?"

"Never."

He buried his head in his hands. She headed towards the door.

"Did you ever consider leaving?"

"Once," she whispered, "just once." She slipped out the door, leaving him alone in the empty room.

If he was being honest with himself, he had never really expected it to last. He had always known that she was too good for him, that beyond anything else, they had never really fit. But it had felt good to pretend for a while.

x

x

Hogwarts was a big place, with endless mazes of corridors and passageways. And yet, Violet Snape seemed to run into Draco Malfoy quite a bit. It was quite a lucky coincidence...well, that and the fact that she dawdled in the dungeons every time she visited her father in hopes of running into the mysterious boy. He didn't seem to mind, although every time they were together, she noticed him glance nervously over her shoulder as if her father might jump out and hex him at any moment.

"Don't you have a girlfriend or something over there in Slytherin?"

"No."

"Aw, come on. You don't expect me to believe that a good-looking guy like you hasn't been scooped up by some girl?"

"I _had_ a girlfriend."

"And?"

"And her father was one of the Death Eaters I testified against."

"Ah."

He shrugged. The decision to date Pansy had never really been his.

"So she broke up with you?"

"Well, she hasn't talked to me in two months...so I'm just assuming it's over. That and she tried to poison me."

Violet raised an eyebrow, "well, maybe to some people, poisoning is just a sign of love."

This comment had the intended effect and he snapped out of his sulk and laughed quietly. This girl had quickly become the only bright spot in his dark life.

"I'll be sure to check all my drinks if you ever fall in love with me."

She leaned in closer to him.

"Draco, my father is a potion's master. I'm sure I could find something undetectable." There was a mischievous glint in her eye. He liked it.

"Well, then I guess my lifespan depends on how long I can keep you from falling in love with me."

"In that case, you should be prepared for a long, miserable life," she teased before pulling away and skipping up the steps to her tower, leaving him there leaning against the wall and wondering what he was getting himself into.

x

x

Hermione arrived in the Great Hall for breakfast. She sat down across from Harry and had taken only a few bites of her toast when Ginny walked in. The girl grabbed her boyfriend and kissed him deeply.

"Thanks for last night," she whispered, none too softly.

Lily watched as Hermione stood and walked out of the Great Hall, leaving the rest of her breakfast untouched. She watched as her son followed the girl, leaving his pouting girlfriend behind.

Harry caught up to Hermione in the hallway.

"Hermione, you've been acting weird lately." He had meant to bring it up with a little more tact and perhaps better timing, but had not been able to contain himself any longer.

"Weird?"

"Yeah, kinda distant. You've been avoiding me."

"I just wasn't hungry. It's no big deal?"

"Is this about Ron?"

"Is what about Ron?"

"You seemed upset today. What happened between you two anyways? I thought you two loved each other."

"No. He's a good friend, I just don't think we're right together."

"You just woke up one day and decided that?" Their relationship had been a firm rock in his life, something that he could count on.

"No. I've thought that for a while, but things were so dangerous, so much was riding on us, on you, that I couldn't risk causing a rift between the three of us. Dating him…helped hold us together when we needed to be held together. So much has changed, Harry, so much. Voldemort is dead, your mother is back. Maybe at one time it made sense for Ron and I to be together, but things are different now."

"What's different?"

"Everything."

_A/N: So you found out why Hermione was with Ron...The reason that Harry is with Ginny is going to come a little later. They have some mistakes to make first._


	10. Chapter 10

It was the winter holidays and Harry was spending them at home with his mother, his new stepfather and his sister. He had reached a cautious truce with Snape, but they were by no means friends. His mother had insisted they spend time over the break on family activities. Ginny's parents had taken her and Ron to Romania to visit their brother Charlie, so he hadn't put up much of a fight. Tonight though, he was going out. He put on a fresh shirt and walked outside to apparate. A few minutes later, he was in Fred and George's small apartment. Seamus was having a party at his parents' house and a few of them had agreed to meet at the twin's place and apparate over together since not all of them knew where it was.

He arrived into the apartment amidst a flurry of activity. Lee Jordan and Dean Thomas were there, talking to Hermione in the living room. They were interrupted by Fred and George, coming out of the kitchen holding an armful of alcohol with mischievous grins on their faces.

"We shouldn't let things get too out of hand tonight, remember what happened last time?" Lee laughed.

"Don't worry, Hermione will take care of us and make sure we don't get into any trouble," Harry grinned at her.

"I'm not your mother," she replied, staring into his eyes.

The rest of the guys laughed at the comment, taking it as a joke, as a complaint about having to pick up their messes all the time. They left the room, talking and joking, but there was a seriousness in her eyes that told Harry she was not joking. He continued to stare at her for a few more minutes with an odd expression on his face, as if realizing for the first time that she was not, in fact, his mother.

x

x

They arrived at the party, alcohol in hand. It seemed as though most of Hogwarts was already there. People were already drunk and everyone wanted to talk to the famous Harry Potter, the one who had defeated Voldemort, but he barely listened to the lips moving in front of him. Hermione's words were still ringing in his head. What had she meant by that? He shook his head as if trying to shake the words out. Of course she wasn't his mother, he had never thought she was. He excused himself as Cormac McLaggan droned on with a play-by-play account of the final battle to an interested-looking group of witches.

Harry walked into the next room to see Hermione passing around a bottle of firewhisky with Fred and George, taking liberal sips. Her face was flushed from the alcohol. It occurred to him that he had never seen her drunk before. She saw him enter the room and walked over to him with the bottle, swaying slightly as she walked. When she reached him, she held out the bottle.

"Here, have some."

"Hermione, this isn't like you," he said softly, not wanting others in the room to get involved.

"Isn't like me to have fun? Isn't like me to relax? Isn't like me to think about myself for a change?"

"That's not what I meant."

"That's exactly what you meant."

She thrust the half-empty bottle into his hands.

"I'm not your sister either." She said angrily and stormed out of the room. He sank into a chair and tilted the bottle to his lips.

He watched her from across the room as she talked animatedly with Luna and was struck both by the fact that she was beautiful and that he had known that all along. He tried to tear his eyes away but found it impossible. Her words came back to him. She was not his sister.

Back when she and Ron had first started dating, Ron had been convinced that Harry liked Hermione too. Harry had told him that he was being ridiculous and that he had always seen Hermione as a sister. He had meant it…or at least thought he had. Now that he actually had a sister, he wondered if he had been wrong, if perhaps Ron and Harry had both felt the same way about Hermione but Ron had been the one who actually had a sister and therefore the one who could tell the difference.

She was not his mother. She was not his sister. Who was she?

Hours passed and they both lost count of the drinks they had had. They hadn't spoken since their confrontation, but caught occasional glances of each other through the sea of people. Finally, she stepped out onto the balcony for a breath of fresh air and he followed.

"Hermione," he said cautiously, pushing his way through the curtain that separated the open balcony from the rest of the room. The curtain flapped in the breeze as she turned around to face him.

"I'm sorry about what I said earlier. I was just confused why you're acting like you are."

"Harry," she said softly, "I took care of you for seven years. I took care of you, I watched out for you, because you needed me to. Well, guess what? You don't need me to anymore. Voldemort is dead, your mother is back, you don't need me anymore."

The breeze blew her tangled curls away from her flushed cheeks. Out there in the moonlight, she was so beautiful. He took a step closer to her and offered her back the bottle she had given him earlier which was almost empty by now. She took it and finished it off. He took it back from her and gently set it on the rail.

He reached down and brushed a stray curl out of her face. There had always been a strange closeness between the two of them that he had never questioned.

"Is that why you're upset? Because I don't need you anymore?"

She laughed at his question, a laugh that contained a tinge of madness and desperation and then moved closer to him until they were almost touching. When she spoke, he felt her breath on his skin.

"I'm not upset about that. Quite the opposite actually. I don't want you to need me. I never did. I want you to want me."

He reached out for her, tracing the curve of her hip with his hand before reaching around to her back and pulling her up against him. Her fingers found their way through his hair and she pulled his head down, pulling his lips into hers. He kissed her back passionately and she ground her body against his. She placed her hand on his chest and started to move it downwards between them. He closed his eyes and waited for her to stop. She was Hermione Granger, after all. He felt reasonably confident that her hand would stop once it reached his waist, but it didn't. He opened his eyes as her hand came to rest on the hard bulge forming in his pants, caressing it through the fabric.

"Harry, I want this. I want everything." She looked up at him, her eyes filled with lust and need and his breathing quickened. He had a girlfriend and in the back of his mind he acknowledged that fact, but the alcohol and the effect of this girl being so close to him convinced him that he could deal with that later. His racing heart told him that this was a moment he had been waiting for for so long without even knowing he was waiting for it.

"I have a portkey to my house," he said softly.

"Take me there," she whispered.

He pulled the key out of his pocket and a second later they were standing in his bedroom. He led her to his bed and lowered himself on top of her.

"Hermione, if you don't want this…"

"Harry, I've wanted this for more years than I can count. But I couldn't. I had to be who you needed me to be."

What followed was a jumble of moans and sensations. He hadn't really thought about the fact that she was a virgin until she cried out when he entered her. By that point, it was too late to stop, far too late.

x

x

Harry drifted off to sleep while she lay on the bed, thoughts racing a million miles an hour and a few stray tears running down her cheeks. She had to get out of there. This had been a mistake, a terrible mistake. She couldn't be here in the morning. She hastily dressed and opened the door silently, slipping out and down the stairs. She just needed to make it outside and then she could apparate home without waking anyone. She glanced at the clock, it was 4 am, everyone was asleep, hopefully she could make it outside unnoticed. What she didn't count on was the fact that she was still quite drunk. As she crossed the living room, she tripped on the carpet, sending her flying into a chair which she toppled over and landed with a crash. She tried to get up, but the room was still spinning. After a few attempts, she finally made it back to standing. Her eyes focused and she became aware there was another figure in the room with her.

"Miss Granger," the voice drawled from across the room, "What are you doing in my house at this time of night?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was up."

"I was working in my labs, I was just coming up to bed. You didn't answer my question."

She glanced down at herself. Her skirt was slightly askew and some of the buttons of her shirt had been buttoned incorrectly in her hurry. With her disheveled hair, she was sure he already knew what she had been doing in his house. She just hoped he didn't notice the dried tears on her face.

"I was…I was just…I was just leaving," she managed to stutter, feeling as though he had just caught her sneaking around the halls of Hogwarts after curfew.

She moved towards the door, but he blocked her exit.

"And how are you getting home?"

"I'm going to apparate."

He stared at her a moment.

"You're drunk. You'll splinch yourself." He didn't even sound angry, just tired and sad.

"I'll be fine," she begged him, "Please, just please let me leave. I can't be here."

The 'when he wakes up' part remained unspoken.

After a few moments he sighed, pulled on his cloak and opened the door.

"Come, I'll apparate you home."

She followed after him as they made their way to the apparition point.

"I'm surprised, Miss Granger," he said, breaking the silence of the night.

She said nothing.

"Surprised and disappointed," he continued, "I never took you to be the sort of girl who would be sneaking into boys rooms drunk in the middle of the night. I thought you were the responsible one."

"I was. I took a night off from responsibility. Someone else can be the responsible one for a change."

"Me, apparently," he remarked before apparating them both.

They landed on a quiet suburban street. She fell to her hands and knees and threw up in the street. Side-along apparition while drunk was safer, but sometimes had some unpleasant side effects.

She stood up and he continued walking her home. She opened the gate and they entered the back yard of her small suburban house. An old swingset creaked in the wind, already wet with the morning dew. She shivered. Being here was painful.

"I had heard that your parents…" he said softly, barely audible over the creak of the swingset.

"The memory charm could not be reversed. I couldn't convince them they had a daughter. My aunt is staying here with me," she said quickly, looking away from him. She clearly did not like to talk about this.

"You sacrificed so much for him," he whispered, studying her intensely. Finally he sighed and cast a wandless unlocking spell on her back door and the door swung open into the darkness beyond.

"You'll be ok from here?"

"Yes. And thank you."


	11. Chapter 11

Harry stumbled into the kitchen the next morning. His eyes were still half-shut. The light was bright, so bright. His head was pounding and he wasn't sure if his stomach could keep anything down. He opened the cabinet where the hangover potions were kept and to his horror discovered it was empty.

"Looking for this?" a voice from the other side of the room drawled.

He spun around to see his stepfather holding a vial and leaning against the wall with a challenging eyebrow raised at him.

"Sit down."

Harry sat. He was in too much pain to argue.

"Do you want to explain to me why I found one of my female students drunk and sneaking out of your room late last night? A female that was not your girlfriend, might I add."

Poor Hermione, he could only imagine how that had gone.

"I….umm..."

"You're just like your father," the man hissed, leaning menacingly on the table, "He always had an extra woman for when his girlfriend wouldn't put out or when he just wanted something different. Why do you think he and your mother broke up the first time? She caught him cheating on her."

"It's not like that. I didn't mean for it to happen."

"That's what he always said."

Harry buried his face in his hands.

"She looked out for you for seven years. She saved your life more times than I can count. She risked her life for you, her parents' lives. She let herself be tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange rather than betray you. She sacrificed so much, and this is how you repay her?" The man was furious.

"She doesn't deserve this from you."

"I know that."

Finally the man handed him the vial which he gulped down at once.

"Please don't tell my mother. I don't want her to be disappointed in me."

"Fine," Snape said in disgust, slamming the kitchen door on his way out.

Harry was left in the kitchen alone, thinking back over the conversation which had just occurred. He had not been surprised by the harsh lecture. He had not been surprised by the unfavorable comparisons to his father. What he had been surprised about was that the man's concern was for the woman he had cheated with, not the woman he had cheated on. It seemed that the professor had a little more respect and affection for Hermione than he had ever let on.

x

x

There was a tapping at her window that woke her. She groaned at the sting of the light as she opened one eye. She rolled over and hid her face under the pillow when she heard the tapping at the window again. Why couldn't wizard letters arrive silently like muggle letters. Muggle letters just sat in your mailbox quietly and waited until you felt like checking for them. They certainly didn't tap at your window when you were asleep and insist on your immediate attention.

Finally giving in to the incessant tapping, she stumbled out of bed and over to the window. A large brown owl flew into the room, dropping a thick envelope at her feet and flying back out the window. The envelope apparently contained more than just parchment since it had made a slight clinking noise when it was dropped on the floor.

She tore open the envelope and emptied the contents onto her desk. It contained two vials. She examined the first one. It was a potion that she recognized and quite desperately needed. She uncorked it and quickly gulped down the hangover potion that the vial contained. The contents of the second vial took her slightly longer to identify. It was not a potion that she had used before so instead had to rely on her book knowledge to discern its contents. Her brain sifted through the possibilities before settling on the potion with matching color, consistency and smell. She blushed and fervently hoped that it was not sent by who she thought it was sent by. She unrolled the small piece of parchment that was wrapped around the vial. "While I fully believe that you have both the talent and the knowledge to brew this yourself, it is not advisable to attempt it for the first time in the twelve hours you have to take this, nor is there any room for error." It was unsigned but she recognized the handwriting immediately from the disparaging comments on her essays. He was obviously aware of how it would have looked to an outsider if the owl had been intercepted and the impropriety those implications would have for both of them. She swallowed the contraceptive potion. It was a small act of kindness from a man who was not known for them.

x

x

Severus was in the middle of brewing when he heard a knock from the front door. Casting a stasis spell on the potion, he left it to go see who was calling. He opened the door to see possibly the last face he was expecting to see today, surrounded by a bushy head of hair that had been considerable tamed since he had seen it the previous night.

"Harry's…at the burrow. The Weasley's arrived back from Romania today," he managed to awkwardly sputter out.

"I know. I came here to talk to you."

He raised one eyebrow. He had expected her to hide in shame and avoid him for at least the next several months. He opened the door and let her into the house.

"I was in the middle of brewing, perhaps you would like to assist me."

"Yes, I'd like that very much."

She followed him to his lab.

"It's just that I was supposed to go to the burrow today, but I'm sure you understand how awkward that would be today. The thing is that I had already told my aunt that I was going and I didn't want to explain to her why I couldn't and I couldn't think of anywhere else to go….so I just came here. I was thinking maybe if you gave me an assignment or something, just to keep my mind off of everything."

He studied her.

"I could use some help."

"Thank you."

They worked in relative silence for a few hours, only punctuated by his occasional instructions and her questions. Finally, he left her to finish stirring the potion, while he went over his notes at his desk.

"Can I ask you something?"

He looked up from his notes.

"Haven't you been asking me questions all day?"

"Something personal."

He hesitated.

"It's only fair, I mean, after last night you know quite a bit about my personal life."

"Fine. One question."

She took a deep breath.

"When Lily was still with James, and not when she was with him after her memories of you had been erased, but the first time she was with him, when she chose to be, if you had had the opportunity to…"

"She would never have," he interrupted her,

"If you had," she continued, unfazed, "would you have taken it?"

He remained silent for a long time and she was pretty sure that he was not going to answer her question. Finally, there was a whispered reply.

"Yes. And it would have destroyed me."

She nodded.

x

x

Harry had spent the days, surrounded by the entire Weasely family, being consumed by guilt. The guilt had slowly boiled within him all day long, driving him mad. He had never thought he was the kind of man to cheat on his girlfriend. He had thought that was other guys, never him. She hung on him, all day long, hugging him and kissing him even as he pulled away, knowing that he didn't deserve her affections.

"You're the best boyfriend ever," she told him. He knew it wasn't true.

Finally, the guilt boiled into a rage within him. It was Hermione's fault. It had to be. He was Harry Potter. He would never willingly cheat on his girlfriend. She had caused it all. She had pretended to be his friend for so many years and then had ruined his life. He held in the rage, trying his hardest not to snap at any of the members of the Weasley family.

Finally it became too much for him and he excused himself, complaining of a headache and returned home. He opened the front door of his house and desperately hoped that no one was there. All he wanted in the whole world was to be alone, to rot in his guilt and rage by himself.

As he stood in the living room, the laboratory door opened. Inwardly, he cringed. Snape was probably the last person he wanted to deal with right now. But it was not Snape that emerged from the other side of the door, it was her. That was when he realized that there was one person he actually wanted to see even less than Snape right now. She saw him and froze, letting go of the door which slammed shut of its own accord behind her. She stood there, incapable of movement or speech.

"I'm not going to apologize," he said coldly, "if that's what you're waiting for."

"I…" She choked.

"I'm not going to apologize because you got exactly what you wanted. You planned on that happening before you even took your first sip of alcohol. You didn't sleep with me because you were drunk, you got drunk so that you would sleep with me," he accused.

She made no move to deny it.

"I should have known. Hermione Granger does nothing without planning it first. Did you make a list? Did you put it on your schedule?"

She looked away from him. He was yelling now.

"How could you do that, Hermione? How could you do that to me? To Ginny? I thought you were her friend. Do you know how guilty I felt today with her? How could you put me in that situation?"

She said nothing, but stared down at the floor. He knew he shouldn't be saying these things. He was mad at himself, not at her. She was just easier to take it out on. He knew he should stop, but the words continued to spill out of his mouth.

"Why did you do it, Hermione? Was it some twisted revenge on Ron? Were you just curious? Did you want to see how we compared to each other? How we each felt inside of you? Did you start planning to seduce me before or after you broke up with him? How long have you been planning this? How long have you wanted it?"

A tear started to make its way down her cheek. He knew he had gone too far, but he didn't stop.

He stepped toward her almost aggressively. "How long?"

"It's always been you," she whispered, turning and fleeing the room, leaving Harry in stunned silence.


	12. Chapter 12

Violet gazed in the shop windows as she made her way down Diagon Alley with Luna. Her parents had been reluctant to let her go without an adult, but since Luna was technically of age, had finally consented. She didn't blame her parents for being so protective. Her mother and father had both lived in fear for such a long time, she could understand why they had a hard time adjusting to the fact that there was no longer such an immediate danger.

There was a light dusting of snow on the cobblestones as the two girls walked. Violet's fascination with this place had not diminished since her first visit. Luckily Luna took things at a much slower pace than her father, so this time Violet got the chance to explore to her heart's content. Luna simply wandered down the street, stopping just as often as Violet, staring at things both seen and unseen.

The two of them had become friends shortly before the winter holidays, both being Ravenclaws and both being somewhat of outcasts in their own house. Everyone thought Luna was crazy for believing the ridiculous stories her father told her, but Violet could sympathize. After all, she had grown up in the muggle world, believing every word her mother had told her about magic and dragons and ghosts and owls. She had no reason to, really; her mother had never offered her anything in the way of proof. But she had known that her mother believed as so she believed too. Really, what was so different about Luna?

After they finished their shopping, they met up with Ginny, Lavender, Pavarti for some butterbeers. Violet didn't really know the girls, but Luna and Ginny had continued their friendship since the DA. They all stepped into the Leaky Cauldron and ordered a round of butterbeers. The girls started pulling items out of their shopping bags, showing each other their new clothing and makeup purchases. Lavender sat next to Pavarti, examining her new pair of shoes. Ginny took the seat next to Violet.

"Violet, it's so good to see you," Ginny gushed, she seemed to be making an extra effort towards her boyfriend's sister. Violet forced a smile. It wasn't that she didn't like Ginny, she just didn't have that much in common with her. Ginny proceeded to ramble on about the various likes, dislikes, and habits of Harry Potter. Violet's head started pounding and she flinched as Lavender's high-pitched giggle cut through the conversation.

"Ugh, I really don't want to go back to school next week."

"Tell me about it. And that greasy git Snape will probably have a test the first week. No offense, Violet."

Violet forced a smile.

"Did you see what Hannah was wearing?"

"I know, so hideous."

Violet realized that although Hermione was in Gryffindor, she had never seen her spend time with these girls. She could now understand why. Violet had about as much patience as her father for idiots. Her attention drifted as the girls discussed hair charms. She felt as though her head was going to explode.

"I just remembered," she said, standing suddenly, "there's a book I promised my father I'd pick up for him. Luna, can you meet me in Flourish and Blotts when you're done?"

Luna nodded.

"It was good seeing all of you," she said quickly "I'll see you back at school." They would no doubt talk about her after she left, but in that moment it seemed preferable to girl talk.

Violet rushed out and down the block into the bookstore. The silent rustling of pages was a welcome relief to the high-pitched giggling.

She made her way down the aisles when suddenly a familiar head of blond hair caught her eye.

"Hello," she said, coming up behind Draco.

"Hey," he said, turning around to face her, then standing a moment in awkward silence.

"How was your Christmas?"

"It was nice, first Christmas with my family together and everything. Father and Harry will never be the best of friends, but they're tolerating each other."

"Yeah."

"What about yours?"

He shrugged.

"First Christmas since my mother died, since my father's in Azkaban. Aunt Andromeda's trying, I know she is, but she has a lot to deal with. She's gone through so much and I don't think that I'm helping anything by being there. She lost her husband, her daughter, and her son-in-law in such a short period of time. She's trying to make a life for her and her grandson, and then I'm there…."

He trailed off and Violet reached out to touch his arm. Why could he not stop himself from pouring his heart out to this girl every time he saw her?

"I remind her of my mother, I know I do, the sister who disowned her. I have the same mark as her other sister, the one who killed her daughter. I try to keep it covered, but she knows it's there."

"She wouldn't have taken you in if she didn't want to."

"I know. It's just that her own family has done so much to hurt her. I want to make things right with her, I just don't know how."

"It just takes time, Draco"

"I know."

His eyes suddenly lit up.

"I have something for you."

"For me?"

"Yeah, I saw this earlier today and it made me think of you. I was going to give it to you back at school, but since you're here now…" He pulled a small package out of his pocket. She unwrapped it to find a flat, polished black stone on a silver chain.

"I saw the stone out back of my Aunt's house. It was so beautiful. It made me think of you and I got it made into a necklace." He looked nervous as he spoke.

"Thank you," she breathed, fastening it around her neck.

She heard the dreamy voice of Luna floating over the stacks, telling some poor, unsuspecting customer about Nargles.

"Luna's here, I should go."

"Oh," he said, his smile disappearing.

"If you wanted to stop by sometime, before we go back to school….if you need someone to talk to…"

His smile returned.

"I'd love to."

o

o

Hermione cautiously entered Snape's lab. Harry had gone to spend the day at the Burrow and Snape had sent her an Owl asking if she would like to assist him in his brewing for the day. He invited her inside and they worked quietly for several hours. Finally he spoke, cutting the silence with his question.

"Have you spoken to Harry?"

"No, not really." She didn't want him to know what had happened, what Harry had said to her. Things were already tenuous enough between the two men and she didn't want to make it worse.

"Maybe you should."

"No. There's no reason," she said quickly.

"He should know how you feel."

"He made his decision a long time ago. He chose her. He loved her enough to leave her in safety as we went off searching for horocruxes."

He shook his head.

"There was no choice with you. He brought you with him because he needed you, because he knew he had no chance without you."

"I don't want to be needed," she sighed, gathering her things to leave. The door closed softly behind her. Severus waited a few moments in the silence.

"You can stop spying now."

Lily stepped out from behind the doorway looking guilty.

"Sorry, I was walking by and it sounded interesting."

She crossed the room and sat at the counter across from him.

"You continue to surprise me, Severus Snape. I never would have taken you as one to help teenage girls with their love lives."

He rolled his eyes.

"Trust me, it wasn't by choice."

Lily grew serious.

"I can talk to her if you'd like."

"No, if you haven't noticed, Miss Granger has few female friends. For some reason she has always been more comfortable talking to men."

Lily nodded. Hadn't she been the same way? She had had a few distant female friends, but she was always closest to her male friends.

"So she's in love with Harry?"

"Unfortunately."

"Don't be so cynical."

"Cynical? He's with the Weasley girl."

"For now."

He raised his eyebrow at her.

"You think he's in love with Miss Granger?"

"You were right when you told her that he put her in danger's path because he needed her, but you seem to believe that he only needed her because of her skill. I think he needed her there for his own strength as well, to be able to have enough love in his heart to defeat Voldemort. He just hasn't realized it yet."

"He seems pretty serious about Miss Weasely."

"Yes, he does, doesn't he."

He raised his eyebrow at his wife.

"She's every teenage boy's fantasy girl, isn't she? I mean, she's pretty, she's fun, she likes quittich. She's smart, but not smart enough to threaten their masculinity. She's had enough boyfriends to know what she's doing, but not enough to be considered easy."

"Excellent analysis, but in case you haven't noticed, your son is a teenage boy."

"He's not," Lily said sadly, "He's trying desperately to be one, but the truth is that he isn't and never really was."

"That's no excuse."

"Severus," she reached out to touch his hand, "When I was with James…the first time, I chose to be with him. I was sixteen, I was only sixteen. I had just had a fight with you and the things you said had hurt me so badly. You were starting to dabble in dark magic and I should have been there for you, I should have been there to pull you back from the ledge, but I was so scared. I was just so scared of who and what you were becoming. I know that wasn't very Gryffindor of me, but I was terrified. You were starting to be a part of this adult world that I wasn't ready for. James was….safe. James was cute and funny and his main concerns were quittich and practical jokes. I was with him for years, until I discovered he was cheating on me, that he had been cheating on me the whole time. Dumbledore always said that we were defined by the choices we made…and I believed that for a long time. I was almost eighteen before I realized that good people make bad choices, that I had given up on you too soon and that just because you had made some bad choices didn't mean that you were a bad man. That was when I broke up with James and started seeing you again."

He shifted and looked away from her.

"And you can never forgive me if you want, for giving up on you, for dating him, but in the end, I made the right choice, and so did you, and so will Harry. And really, what else matters?"

He pulled her closer and kissed her, "there is nothing to forgive."

o

o

It was the last day of the holidays. The situation with Harry had been tense and Severus was actually looking forward getting back to Hogwarts and spending time in his chambers with his wife and without any children around.

He entered the living room to see his stepson with his wand pointed at his godson, an overturned lamp sitting on the floor. Would this boy never learn?

"Harry," he barked, "put your wand down. Draco is my godson and a guest in this house. No matter your personal feelings about him, he is my guest and will be treated accordingly."

"Oh, he's not here to see you," Harry said slowly, lowering his wand but keeping his eyes fixed on Draco. "He's here to see Violet."

Snape immediately tensed and eyed the boy suspiciously.

"Go upstairs, Harry, I'll take care of his."

Harry left slowly and reluctantly, comforted only by the look of cold rage he saw in his stepfather's eyes that seemed to be directed at Draco.

Once Harry had left, an uneasy silence filled the room. Draco figured it was better to let Severus speak first. Although he had never been at the receiving end of this man's rage, he had been a witness to his power.

"She's sixteen," he said slowly.

"I know."

"You're eighteen."

"Yes."

"And you're here because?"

"We're friends."

"Friends?" Severus asked suspiciously. He had been so worried about not knowing how to be a father. It seemed as if now came to him automatically, instinctually.

"Yes, friends."

"I've heard of your…exploits. It's impossible to work at Hogwarts and not."

"She is not an exploit."

"So you have no intentions with her beyond friendship?"

"I didn't say that. I care for her…deeply. And I think that she cares about me too. But for now, I'm not going to try for anything beyond friendship."

"She doesn't need friends like you. She doesn't need to be hanging around with people like you."

Draco stared at him, comprehending his meaning.

"People like me? Get to the point, Severus. What are you afraid of? That she's too much like her mother? That she'll end up with a man like her father?"

"Don't speak to me like that."

"Then don't speak to me like I'm some sort of disease, like I'm some sort of criminal."

"You have the mark."

"So do you."

The man just stared at him with contempt.

"I didn't want it." Draco said earnestly, "You know I didn't want it. Can you say the same?"

No response.

Severus shifted, eyes never leaving Draco.

"Don't think that you know anything about my past. Just stay away from my daughter. What is your interest in her anyways? She's not a pureblood."

"I've changed. I don't believe everything my father told me anymore."

"People don't change."

"You did."

"Change takes time. It's been less than a year since you were following the Dark Lord."

"And how long did you wait? Or were you with her even when you were still following him?"

"What happened between me and my wife is none of your business," he snapped at him.

Draco stared at him in silence and disbelief for a few moments.

"All those things that you said at my trial, did you ever mean any of them?"

There was no response.

"You believe I should be in Azkaban, don't you?"

The man stared at him with his bottomless black eyes, but did not answer. Draco came to a realization. It felt like he had been kicked in the gut, hard.

"All this time, I thought I was the one making the sacrifice. I thought I was sacrificing my family for my freedom. But I wasn't the one making the sacrifice, it was you. You believed I should serve time in Azkaban but you were willing to sacrifice my imprisonment to make sure that certain death eaters never saw the light of day again."

There was still no response.

The one man, the only one who had defended him, who had stood by his side, had betrayed him, had used him, had never wanted to help him, only to use him to hurt others.

"I did what I had to do, Draco."

Several silent moments passed between them.

"You think I should have spent the rest of my life in Azkaban?" He said with disbelief.

"Not the rest of your life, but at least a few years. You needed to be taught a lesson, to learn that there are consequences to your actions."

"I've already lost everything," a whisper was the most that Draco could manage, "Isn't that enough for you?"

"No."

o

o

Harry looked up as he heard a knock on his door. It was a terse knock, almost hesitant. It was not a knock he had heard before. He sent a wandless spell that cracked the door open. The figure on the other side pushed it the rest of the way and stepped into the room. It was his stepfather. Severus looked around him uncomfortably. He had never been in this room before. Harry raised his eyebrows at the man.

He spoke quickly and awkwardly, looking around the room, but never directly at Harry.

"Hogwarts is a big place. I will do my best but it is difficult to keep a close eye on a student all of the time, especially when I have classes to be teaching."

Harry nodded.

"I'll help you keep him away from her."

Severus looked at him and nodded.

It had taken them nearly seven years, but they had finally found something that they could agree on: that Draco Malfoy was not suitable company for young Violet.

Snape turned to leave. He was halfway out the door when he hesitated. He spoke, still facing the door.

"I'm sorry about earlier…you had every right."


	13. Chapter 13

Violet stood on the train platform. Her parents had had to go back to Hogwarts early, so her brother had escorted her to the station. He had not left her side. Her eyes scanned the crowd for the blond hair she longed to see. Violet expected Harry to run off and sit with his friends once they boarded the train, but he did not.

She finally caught sight of the person she had been looking for and started to slip away when Harry reached out and grabbed her arm roughly.

"Violet, come sit with me," he said as he pulled her into an empty compartment. She fell back into the seat and the train started to move. Harry took the seat across from her. He looked out the window while his sister sat there glaring across the compartment at him.

"Did father talk to you?" She asked. Her father had told her that he didn't want her hanging out with the wrong sort of people at school and that the wrong sort most definitely included Draco Malfoy.

"He didn't need to."

"Harry, he's my friend."

"You don't know him, Violet, you don't know what he's done."

"I do know him. I know him better than you do."

"You've known him for a few months. I've known him for seven years. Violet, he's a Slytherin, a Death Eater."

"So was my father," she said to Harry, narrowing her eyes and staring at him sharply as if daring him to say a word against her father.

It was their first fight, their first moment as real siblings. Both being raised as only children, their interaction thus far had been an only child's dream of what it would have been like to have a sibling. But as any of the Weasley's could have told them, this was much closer to reality.

"You have no right to tell me who to date." She said sharply in a tone reminiscent of her father, "I don't comment on who you date."

"That's because I date Ginny and Ginny's great."

Violet let out a short laugh.

"What?" Harry said indignantly. "Everyone likes Ginny."

"Not everyone."

"Who? Who doesn't like Ginny?"

"Me."

Harry was shocked.

"What could you possibly not like about her?"

"I just prefer girls with more substance. I can see why you like her though. She must be great for your ego."

"What do you mean?"

"She's a fan, Harry, not a girlfriend. A girlfriend is an equal partner, not an admirer."

"In case you haven't noticed, Violet, a lot of people see me as a hero. Ginny's not exactly unique in acting that way."

"I'm sorry to burst your ego, Harry, but not all girls worship you. Hermione's never been afraid to tell you when you're full of yourself."

He glared at her angrily, not knowing what to say, so she continued, voicing all her unvoiced observations about her brother. She knew she was crossing a line with him, but he had made her angry enough to not care.

"You know what I think? I think that after your parents 'died', the Dursley's, the only family you'd ever known abused you, they never loved you. Then one by one the people who did love you started dieing: Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, Remus Lupin. You were terrified of getting your heart broken. You were so insecure, so worried that you weren't even worthy of being loved. You didn't think you could handle rejection on top of everything else that had happened, so you went for the one girl you knew for sure would never break your heart, the one girl who you knew could never do anything except for love you. You're supposed to be a Gryffindor, but you went for the safest option you could."

"And what's wrong with that?" He didn't try to deny it. After all, he had seen dating someone he was sure about as a good thing.

"You don't even love her."

He made no move to deny it.

"I don't care what you think of her. You can keep your opinions to yourself."

"Your mother doesn't like her either."

"She told you that?"

"No, she didn't have to."

"You don't know what you're talking about, she's always been perfectly nice to Ginny."

"You've known her less than a year, but I've known her my whole life. I can tell when she genuinely likes someone and when she's just being polite."

Harry decided that he had let her steer him too far from the original topic of the conversation, Draco Malfoy.

"Violet, Malfoy is not a good friend. I'm only getting involved because I don't want to see you get hurt. He's not a nice person."

Violet leaned forward in her seat.

"I saw Hermione leaving our house in tears, Harry, so don't lecture me on friendship. I don't know what you did to her, but she's the best friend you've got and you did something to hurt her. You can say a lot of things about Draco, but he's never made me cry."

"Don't talk to me about Hermione," he snapped at her. The guilt still consumed him. "Anyway, we're not talking about me, we're talking about Malfoy."

"Draco is my friend, Harry, and it's going to stay that way. You can't tell me anything about him that I don't already know."

"So he's told you all about it then? All about his past? Has he told you how he used to lead girls on, sleep with them and then be done with them. Has he told you about that?"

She turned towards the window and didn't respond.

"Do you want to be his girlfriend, Violet? Is that what you want? Do you think he's going to marry you?"

They had been flirting for months, she had been hoping the relationship was headed in that direction, but…

"Has he even touched you? Our mother's muggle-born, Violet. He's probably repulsed by the thought of it."

It was true, he had never touched her in that way, had never initiated contact at all. She had thought he was interested in her as more than a friend…but maybe Harry was right.

Snape was there when they got off the train. He watched Harry exit with Violet and sent him a short nod. Confident that she was now under the watchful eye of her father, Harry went off in search of his friends.

o

o

They were back at school for a few days before Draco managed to run into Violet alone in the castle.

"Violet."

She turned towards him with an irritated flash in her eyes.

"I thought you were going to come visit me over the holidays."

"I tried. Your father wouldn't let me see you."

"I thought he liked you. I thought he was a family friend, your godfather. I thought he helped you get out of Azkaban."

"I thought so too.," Draco said quietly.

"He doesn't want me spending time with you."

"I know. But I don't know if I can handle that. Your friendship really means a lot to me."

"Friends? Is that what this is?" She said angrily. Had Harry been right? Was Draco not interested in her like that? She stormed away, leaving a very confused Draco Malfoy in her wake.

o

o

Harry went looking for Hermione. He had been thinking a lot about her since he had gotten back to school. She had stayed away from him, much to everyone's curiosity and Ginny's delight. But he felt an emptiness in the space she used to occupy in his life. If he was honest with himself, he missed her. He had spent almost every day alone with her for the better part of a year. To have gone a few weeks now without speaking to her was more than he could handle.

More than anything, he felt terrible about the things he had said to her. He hadn't meant them. He had been angry at himself and she had had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He knew that what had happened between them that night was as much his fault as it was hers.

The fact that she had basically admitted to being in love with him was something that he hadn't completely dealt with yet. And the fact that she could have felt that way from the beginning was even more unimaginable to him. He kept thinking of the look of hurt in her eyes as she had fled from the room. He had thought that he had felt bad for cheating on Ginny, but that feeling in the pit of his stomach when he realized he had hurt Hermione had been so much worse.

He knew now that he was attracted to her, but the thought of having Hermione as a girlfriend was still hard to imagine. Ginny was easy to deal with. She adored him. It was so simple. Hermione, on the other hand, gave him a hard time about a lot of stuff. She had been nagging him for months to apply for a job at the ministry. She said that he was a public figure and that people looked up to him. She said that he could do a lot of good there. It didn't sound like much fun to him. Ginny was fun to hang out with. She always had some funny story or gossip to make him forget about the serious stuff.

He wasn't sure exactly what he felt towards Hermione, only that he missed talking with her, missed her very presence. All he knew was that no matter what, he needed to fix his friendship with her.

He slipped out of the common room and went looking for her in the place he was sure to find her, the library.

Sure enough, she sat alone at a table, bent over a book. She didn't look up until he sat down next to her. She looked at him with a blank expression on her face.

"Hermione, I'm so sorry about..."

"Don't, Harry," she said standing up quickly and gathering her things. "Just don't."

"I miss you. I need you," he whispered as she started to walk away.

She stopped and for an instant he thought she was going to stay and listen to him.

"That's not my problem, Harry."

He watched as she disappeared behind the book stacks and a few moments later heard the library door close behind her. And for the first time, he realized that he might have lost her forever.

o

o

_He looked around him, the room was dark but even in the low light he could see that it was filthy. Where was he? There was an old woman there, gnarled teeth and matted white hair. She was shorter than he but there was something wrong, something very wrong. Hadn't he been here before? The woman was speaking. What was she saying? Her words carried a faint hissing sound with them. Then she was a snake, the horrible moment of realization, of mindless fear, of the glowing eyes of the snake in the darkness coming towards him._

Harry gasped for air, his eyes shot open, and he sat up suddenly. He was sweaty, heart still pounding in fear as he looked around the quiet room. He was not in Godric's Hollow, he was in the boy's dormitory of Hogwarts. It had been a nightmare, only a nightmare.

He had thought that once his connection to Voldemort was gone, that the nightmares would go away, but they hadn't. They had changed. They were no longer visions and memories from Voldemort sent to him through the link. They were his own memories, his worst memories, revisited and relived at night while he slept.

The first morning light was starting to poke through the windows and he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. He dressed silently and made his way down to the common room.

It remained empty for nearly an hour as he sat by himself. He wanted more than anything to talk to Hermione. She had been through it all with him, had stood by his side through all those terrible moments, she would understand. He suspected that she was even visited by the very same nightmares that plagued him.

He heard footsteps on the stairway from the girl's dormitory and looked up hopefully. He tried not to let his face sink too much when he saw it was only Ginny.

"What are you doing up so early?" she asked, taking a seat next to him on the couch.

He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep."

She studied his face thoughtfully.

"Another nightmare?"

"Yeah."

"It's ok...they'll go away eventually."

She moved closer to him, reaching out to touch him.

"I understand..."

"You weren't there," he stated sharply, pulling away from her.

"Don't say that you understand, that you know what I'm going through. You weren't there. Don't say that you understand because you have NO IDEA what that year was like, what we went through."

o

o

Later that day, Harry went to see his mother in her office. He needed to talk to someone and he had recently angered both his sister and girlfriend...not to mention Hermione who still wasn't speaking to him. There was also the matter of the things that Violet had said about his mother's feelings towards his girlfriend. He made his way through the stone corridors towards her office.

He knocked on the wooden door and was just about to reach for the knob when it open suddenly from the other side and he found himself face-to-face with Hermione. She froze in mid-motion, stepping out the door only inches from him. It was the closest they had been to each other since...

"Hermione," he breathed in surprise.

She stared at him for a moment, still frozen, then finally stammered, "I was...I was just leaving," and edged her body around his and took off quickly down the hallway. He was about to take off after her when he heard his mother's voice from inside the office.

"Harry? Is that you, dear?"

"Yes," he said, with one last glance down the hallway. he stepped into the office and shut the door behind him.

"Hermione was just here talking to me about an extra credit project. She really is such a brilliant girl."

"Yeah. I saw her leaving."

His mother studied him for a moment.

"Did you and Hermione have a fight?"

He nodded.

"Whatever it is, Harry, fix it."

"But..."

"Fix it," his mother told him sternly. At least it seemed that Snape had kept his word and had not told Lily what her son had done. Harry had no doubt that he would be getting yelled at right now if she knew. It seemed as if his mother had taken a liking to Hermione.

"I wanted to talk to you...about Ginny. Violet said that you didn't like her."

"She's a perfectly nice girl, Harry."

"You don't sound very enthusiastic."

"What do you want me to say? That she's brilliant? That she's an incredible woman? That she's perfect for you? She's not any of those things. She's a fine girl for a high school sweetheart, but are you really planning on marrying her?"

Harry shrugged. He actually had been planning on it. Ginny had hinted several times that she wanted to get married and start a family as soon as she graduated. He had just figured he would go along with it. It had seemed at the time like the easy thing to do. Why were things getting so complicated now?

"I thought everything would be easier... once the war ended."

"These things are never easy, Harry. You just had bigger things on your mind before...you just set all this personal stuff aside to deal with later and it has all caught up to you now."

He was thankful for his mother's understanding. He forgot sometimes that she too had grown up into a time of war.

He thanked her and started to leave the office.

"She's in love with you, Harry. You know that, right?"

He was about to retort that of course Ginny was in love with him, that he had practically known that since he first met her...but then he realized that his mother wasn't talking about Ginny, she was talking about Hermione.

"Yes. I know."

o

o

Hermione sat beside Snape as they brewed. She stared into the steam that drifted up from the cauldron, lost in thought. She never would have anticipated this friendship with the man. He listened, he understood, he didn't judge her or ridicule her...he had been in her position before.

"I packed my things once. I never told anyone. It was right after Dumbledore's funeral. I heard Harry whisper to Ginny that he loved her. I went home and packed my things, my muggle things, just a few changes of clothes and some money in a backpack. It would have been so easy to leave then, to break my wand in two and leave it all behind. For Ron, it was different. Most of his family were members of the Order, when he was fighting he was fighting to protect them as well, but for me, my fighting was what was putting my family in danger in the first place. I was risking people I loved, risking my own life, for someone who would never love me back and I wanted to get as far as possible away from all of it. It would have been so easy just to leave."

"But you didn't."

"I couldn't. I would rather die by his side than live anywhere else. And I realized that I would still die for him whether or not he ever returned my feelings. I'm only telling you this because I think you're the one person who might understand."

"Probably a little too well."

"Lily loves you back, though, it is a different situation."

She stared at her.

"And if she didn't, I would have thrown my life away for her anyways."

They resumed brewing silently for a few minutes.

"Have you thought about your future?"

"My future?"

"After graduation."

"Harry and Ron always wanted to be aurors, but…"

"But you didn't want to plan for a future you might never survive to see?"

"It just seemed too optimistic."

"And now that you know you have a future?"

"I'm not sure. I am interested in potions."

"There is a private potions college in Germany. It's very exclusive. It is the program that I attended. I could send a letter there if you like."

"I don't know. Isn't that the program that doesn't let you have any outside correspondence and only lets you leave for one week each year?"

He stopped stirring and looked up at her seriously.

"It might be good for you to get away from everything, to get away from…him."

o

o

_A/n: for those of you who are confused, James is still Harry's real father. He was conceived after she had gotten back together with James because Dumbledore had erased Lily's memories of James cheating on her and her relationship with Severus._


	14. Chapter 14

The Great Hall was decorated more elaborately than they had ever seen it before. Floating candles lit the room in a soft glow, causing everything to sparkle. It was a cold night for this time of year and was pouring rain outside, but it was nice and cozy in the elegantly decorated hall. Tonight was the night of the graduation ball. The seventh-years would graduate in the morning...the first class to graduate into a world without war...

Tomorrow they would have to worry about what to do with the rest of their lives, but tonight they would have one last celebration in the place that held so many good and bad memories for all of them, the place that had sometimes been a refuge and sometimes a battleground.

Violet sat at one of the tables, bored already. She was not graduating, in fact, she still had two more years left at Hogwarts, but most of her friends were older than her and she had come tonight for them.

She had agreed to be Neville's date, but after the first thirty minutes of the dance they had run out of things to say to each other and he had gone off in search of his friends, leaving her to sip her pumpkin juice alone.

Violet heard a familiar voice behind her.

"Dance with me."

It was clearly not a question. She spun around to tell him that he couldn't tell her what to do, but when she saw the look on his face, she could tell that it was not a command...it was a plea.

She glanced across the hall to where her parents stood chaperoning. The last thing she wanted was a scene. Her parents were dancing, her father with his back to her and her mother watching her over his shoulder. Her mother gave her a wink and whispered something in her husband's ear before quietly leading him out of the room.

Violet got up and took Draco's outstretched hand letting him lead her to the dance floor. They had spoken briefly over the past few months...but there was still some distance in their friendship.

"Where's your brother?" He asked as they walked.

Violet looked up to see an angry-looking Ginny Weasley storming across the hall in tight red dress robes. Harry was nowhere in sight.

"I have no idea...he was here earlier."

They started to dance and he pulled her close to him, closer than she had expected him to. She was so close that she could hear him...feel him breathing against her. Her eyes slipped closed as he whispered in her ear.

"I have some things to tell you and I want you to listen...just listen to me until I'm done. I want you in my life, Violet. I've lost everything and you're the only good thing I have left. These past few months you've pulled away from me and I don't know why...only that I can't take it anymore. I want you, Violet. You're smart and you're beautiful and you're kind. I want more than friendship. If you don't want that, then I'll just be the best friend to you that anyone has ever had. But one way or another, I need you in my life. I can't imagine it without you."

She pulled back from him a little so that she could see his eyes.

"I thought you...I thought you weren't interested in me like that. That was why...why I pulled away from you. I didn't want to get hurt."

"I would never hurt you."

She leaned her head on his shoulder and suddenly he stiffened.

She looked behind her to see that her parents had just reentered the great hall. Her father had spotted them and was heading in their direction. Her mother was in his path, buying them some time.

"I should go," Draco said quickly, slipping out of her embrace. He turned to leave, but she caught his wrist.

"I decide who I date. I'll deal with my father."

He pulled his wrist free of his grasp.

"I don't want you to have to 'deal' with him, Violet. You've just gotten to know him and I don't want to come in the middle of it."

She opened her mouth to say something, but he didn't let her.

"Come find me later."

And with that he walked away.

x

x

Hermione sat in the greenhouse listening to the rain. She hadn't wanted to go to the ball and watch the man she loved dance with another woman while she sat alone. She had gotten as far away from the castle as she could, someplace where no one would find her. So she sat elbows deep in the warm soil as she tended the plants.

The rain pounded on the glass roof of the greenhouse. In the darkness, the castle was only a blur of light in the distance through the rain-splattered glass. She would graduate tomorrow and leave this place and go far away from him. She had ignored him since their fight. But she missed him, every single day. The worst part was that despite all the hurt he had cause her, she still loved him. And she knew that deep down, beneath his immaturity and his boyishness, that he was the man she wanted. He had stopped trying to talk to her at least, but she still kept catching him staring at her thoughtfully when he thought she wasn't looking. At least things would change soon. She just hoped that the distance would make it easier for her to move on with her life. She wasn't sure what she was going to do if it didn't...

She heard the door creak up and she turned as Harry stepped into the greenhouse, his crumpled dress robes soaked from the rain. She looked up at him. He stood in the doorway, staring at her and saying nothing as the rain dripped off of him making a puddle on the floor.

"Aren't you supposed to be at the ball?" She asked coldly.

"Yes."

"Where's Ginny?"

"Ginny's over?"

"Over?"

"Over," he repeated, stepping closer to her, his green eyes burning with a conviction she had not seen in him in a long time, not since the death of Voldemort.

"Ginny was an escape. It was all too much for me and being with her was a way for me to forget about everything even if it was just for a little while. She was young enough, removed enough from the war for me to be able to see her without seeing it. But you, you _were_ the war. You were everything I was fighting for. When I saw you, I saw everything that I had to do, everything that I needed to be and it terrified me."

She stood there speechless, so he continued.

"The war's over. I still wake up every day terrified that this has all been a dream and that Voldemort is still alive. I still see the war when I look at you. I still see everything you want me to be and I can't….I can't disappoint you. Ginny has idolized me since I was eleven years old while you've always seen me exactly as I am. As flawed as I am, you've always seen me and wanted me to be more."

"I never.." she choked on her tears.

He held up his hand to stop her.

"You did. You still do. You haven't changed. The only thing that has changed is me. For so long the thought of being the man you wanted me to be terrified me. I wasn't sure if I could do it. You challenge me, Hermione. You challenge me in ways I would never challenge myself. I knew that no matter what I did, Ginny would always look up at me with those brown eyes full of love and admiration. Ginny always accepted me, but you challenge me to be more. You've always seen the man that I could be. I can't promise you that I can be the man you want me to be, but for the first time in my life I can tell you that I want to be that man. And it still scares me, scares me that I will never be able to reach that goal, but I'm going to try."

"What happened, Harry? Where is this all coming from?"

"Ginny and I were talking about graduation, about what I would do after. She suggested I be a quidditch player. She said I was probably good enough to play seeker professionally. Quidditch! As if playing quidditch was a good way to follow-up saving the world. That was when I knew. It was that exact moment that I knew she was a teenage crush and nothing more. It was the moment that I knew I wanted more out of myself and that she would never understand. It was the moment that I realized that I wanted from myself what you've wanted from me all along."

"Harry, I'm leaving. For three years. I already committed, I can't….you can't just come in here and say all these things and expect..."

"I know," he interrupted her, stepping closer until they were nearly touching, "I'm not asking you for anything. You should go, you've earned your place there. I just wanted you to know that I''m going to accept the position that the Ministry has been offering me. I just wanted you to know that while you're gone, I'm going to be working on changing things and that when you get back, I'll be waiting for you if you still want me."

Her anger softened and she stepped forward into his open arms.

"Harry, I'll always want you."

He bent down and kissed her sweetly and slowly. It was the kiss that had been coming since they first met at eleven years old on the train to Hogwarts.

"It's going to be a long three years," she murmered.

"We still have a couple of days left before you leave," he whispered in her ear, pulling her closer.

"What did you have in mind," she teased.

"Dance with me."

She smiled, stepped back and transfigured the dirty t-shirt and jeans she wore into a pale blue dress.

He took her in his arms. And danced in the greenhouse as the glass fogged up and the rain beat down on the glass roof, providing them with music and rhythm.

"I love you, Hermione. I'm sorry it took me so long to figure it out. I'm sorry it took me so long to grow up. I'm sorry I hurt you."

"Just promise me you'll never hurt me again."

"I promise."

x

x

x

Graduation came and went without incident. The morning after, Severus sat at his desk recording the end of the year grades in his grade book. There was a knock at the door and he called for the visitor to come in. He looked up as his godson stepped through the door of his office. As the boy was no longer his student and Severus had already made it perfectly clear that he wanted nothing personal to do with him. That left only one thing for this visit to be about...his daughter.

Draco stood just inside the door and did not approach his desk. Severus said nothing, but fixed his glare upon the boy, daring him to speak.

"Two years. I won't see her for two years while she finishes school. But after that, she will be an adult and there will be nothing you can do to stop us from being together."

Draco turned to leave.

"I watched you grow up, Draco. I saw how quickly you went through toys. You won't even remember her name in two years."

Draco turned back towards him, with a look of quiet determination in his eyes.

"In two years, her name will be Violet Malfoy."

x

x

x

Draco walked quickly through the corridors, his heart still racing from his encounter with Snape. He turned the corner and caught sight of Violet.

"Draco!" she ran up to him and was about to encompass him in a hug when he held out his hand to stop her.

"Violet. I spoke with your father. I promised him I wouldn't see you until you graduated."

"That's ridiculous. He has no say in who I see." She moved forwards towards him and he moved backwards out of her grasp.

"Violet, when the Dark Lord returned, my father chose him, over me, over our family. I hated him for it. I don't want to make you choose. I know you want to keep seeing me, but you have a father who loves you and I don't want to make things complicated between you and him."

She didn't look at him.

"Violet, I think some time might be good. There are things I need to do. I need to get my life together," he pleaded with her.

A tear rolled down her cheek and he couldn't help himself from reaching forward to wipe it away.

"I love you, Violet. Let me have some time to fix the mess my father made, some time to prove myself, to prove to everyone that I'm different from him. Let me prove it to both myself and to your father that I'm worthy of you."

"Worthy of me?"

It was his turn to look away. He hadn't planned on telling her all this yet, but as always, he couldn't stop himself from pouring his heart out to this girl. He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes once again, intensely and honestly.

"I love you, Violet Snape, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I know that, beyond any doubt. When you graduate in two years, I am going to ask you to marry me. I don't want to do that with your father trying to stop me every step of the way. I want him to know that I'm serious about you, that I'm serious about living a different life than my father. I want to be a man who is worthy of being with you and I want him to know that. I just need some time to set things right."

She stared at him for a few silent minutes and then finally whispered, "I'll miss you."

"I'll owl you every day."

"Promise?"

"I promise." He was about to turn to leave when she grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in for a heated kiss before letting him go, watching him walk down the long corridor and out of her life for the next two years.

x

x

_A/N: The scene between Harry and Hermione in this chapter was one of the very first once I wrote for this story. It was sort of me trying to work out why he would ever choose Ginny over Hermione. I just hope I didn't make Harry too much of an asshole in the preceding chapters. She forgives him...I hope you do too. Next up: we skip ahead two years._


	15. Chapter 15

Two years later...

Graduation day had come again. The years had rolled by quickly and now his little girl was going to be a Hogwarts graduate. He had only known of her existence, only been in her life for a few short years and already she was an adult. It had all happened too quickly.

"He's been great. He's been such a help with Teddy."

"Who has?" Severus looked up at the woman he was speaking with, suddenly aware that he had lost track of the conversation.

"Draco, of course." Andromeda said.

"Draco?" He couldn't help the hint of disbelief and skepticism that crept into his voice at the thought of the woman's nephew being helpful with her orphaned grandson.

"Draco stops by all the time. He's so good with Teddy. He even took him to the zoo last week."

Severus looked at her as if she had sprouted a second head.

"The _muggle_ zoo?"

"Yes, of course."

There was an announcement that the ceremony would be staring soon and people began to move towards their seats, but Andromeda caught his arm.

"He's changed, Severus. He really has," she whispered as the crowd moved around them, "You're going to have to forgive him sometime. My mother was a stuck-up muggle-hating bitch. I called several people a mudblood before I started thinking for myself. He's not Lucius. Don't punish him for the mistakes of his father," she hesitated as if unsure if she should stop there or go further, "and don't punish him for yours."

She released his arm and he took his seat next to his wife, catching her eye in a proud smile as their daughter walked across the platform.

x

x

The ceremony was followed by a family dinner. Harry now lived at Grimmauld place and spent long hours at the Ministry, so getting the family together for a meal had been rare in recent years.

They had finished eating, but all remained at the table, reluctant to finish the meal and break the perfect moment of happiness.

A knock at the door interrupted the laughter and conversation from within. Lily rose.

"I'll see who it is," she left her family and went to answer the door. A few minutes later she returned to the dining room, followed by a well-dressed young man in a black cloak. Severus stopped mid-sentence and stood, eying the young man. Draco did not blink.

"What are you doing here?" the older man growled.

"I told you I'd give her two years."

Violet opened her mouth to say something, but Draco silenced her with an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

"Is there somewhere we can speak?"

"Draco, you are interrupting a family dinner."

"I promised you two years and not a day more."

There was a seriousness in Draco's eyes that told Severus that the young man was not leaving until he had said what he came here to say. Severus motioned for Draco to join him in the other room.

When the kitchen door had closed behind them, Draco reached into his cloak and pulled out a stack of letters.

"I kept my promise to you and until tonight, I have not laid eyes on Violet in two years," he set the heavy stack of parchment down on the table, "I have written her every day and these are all the letters I have received back from her."

Severus eyed the stack of parchment and crossed his arms, but said nothing.

"I have spent the past two years trying to put my family businesses back together, trying to make up for the damage that my family caused."

The door to the kitchen opened and Harry stepped into the room, letting the door swing closed behind him. His gaze darting from one man to the other before he spoke.

"The Ministry has been keeping a close eye on Malfoy. They have been following his every move, listening to his every conversation. Every business deal, every transaction he has made in the past two years has been heavily scrutinized. There is a thick file on him at the Ministry and I have read through it all. He has not even so much as made a derogatory comment towards a muggle or muggle-born. He has done nothing illegal or unethical. His business and personal life have in no way been connected with any of the past associations of him or his family."

Draco stared at him as he spoke in amazement. Harry Potter was the last person he had expected to come to his defense, especially when the object in question was Draco having a relationship with his sister.

Harry cleared his throat before he continued.

"The ministry file also went in-depth into his personal life. There are not many twenty-year-old men who would give up all physical pleasure for a woman they only contacted through letters. And it wasn't that he didn't have the opportunity. There were women who tried…" he drifted off, not wanting to go into details about the thoroughness of the Ministry's surveillance. Needless to say, many young witches were attracted to a rich, handsome young man trying to escape a dubious past. Malfoy had turned them all down.

"There aren't many men like that Severus. Violet is lucky to have one of them."

His step-father remained silent, staring at the blond-haired man for a long time.

"What is it that you plan to do?" he asked finally.

"I would like to marry her eventually and I believe she feels the same about me. For now, I would like your permission to date her."

x

x

A year later...

It was a beautiful wedding. Not overly done, but if Narcissa Malfoy had been alive to see her only son get married, she wouldn't have been too overly disappointed in the whole affair.

Draco took a break from spinning his bride around the dance floor to share a moment with his aunt.

"When my mother died, when my father and aunt were sent to Azkaban, I believed that I would never have a family again. I want to thank you for taking me in, for everything you've done for me."

"Draco, you're the one who has helped me. I don't think I could have raised Teddy on my own. He looks up to you. When my own sisters disowned me all those years ago, I thought that was a part of my family that I would never get back. I'm glad that I got the chance to get to know you."

Across the room, Harry held Hermione in his arms as they danced.

"Somehow it hasn't really felt over until now?"

"What hasn't?" She turned her head to look at him.

"The war."

"Some things take time to really sink in."

Harry glanced around the room, his mother, his stepfather, his sister, his new brother-in-law. His family was growing larger by the day.

"Being with Ginny was a way to be a someday be a legitimate part of the Weasley family. I never had a family of my own and I desperately wanted to be a part of theirs. I have a family now, Hermione. It may not be the perfect family, but I have one. I know that unofficially you're already a part of that family," he smiled shyly at her, "but whenever you're ready to become an official part of it, just let me know."

"Harry Potter, are you asking me to marry you?"

"I'm just asking you to let me know when you're ready."

Harry raised his glass later that night in a toast, welcoming Draco to the family.

"We're all orphans in our own way. I was raised without my parents, Andromeda was disowned by hers, Draco testified to keep his family is Azkaban, Hermione sent hers away for their protection. " His eyes sought out Severus' and his mothers. "We're a family of people who have lived without family, who will never take it for granted."


End file.
